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WILLIAM 

DE MORGAN 

AND HIS WIFE 




/ETAT 70 



ff-om a p/xotiHft-iifj/i ly utkeL iJLazfl'rwk 



WILLIAM DE MORGAN 
AND HIS WIFE 



BY 
A. M. W. STIRLING 

Author of "Coke of Norfolk," etc. 
IVii/t a Preface by the late Sir William Richmond, K.C.B., R.A. 




*Mr. De Morgan is a national institution ; and 
one would as soon tliink of criticising the Bank 
of England as of criticising one of his novels.' 

— Literary Supplement of The Times 



NEW YORK 
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

1922 






AUTHORIZED EDITION 



PRINTED w V. S. A. 



To 

BOTH 

* Have you ever picked a sheaf of brilliant autumn 
leaves, glowing like transparent rubies in the sunlight, 
and carried them home to your dim room ? If you 
have, you have known that which I felt. Where 
was the glow, the glory, the crimson flame ? All 
gone. . . . 

' And just so from my written words had faded 
the rich glow that shone around them in my fancy 
when they were still umvritten. Alas ! the leaves — 
the words — were alike worthless by themselves.' 

From Generation to Generation. 

By Lady Augusta Noel. 



• It is the best thing on Earth — that incessant struggle. . . . Art is 
more important than you think. But it must be earnest, grim Ufe-earnest- 
ness that has no tincture of gain in it or love of earth-fame, only the 
strength of one's arm, and the whole power of one's being is to be given 
to it ; and to look neither to the right nor to the left, but go straight on 
doing the best that is in one.' 

The Result of an Experiment. 



PREFACE 

WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

By an Old Friend 

(The late Sir William Richmond, R.A.) 

I AM not sure if it was in the autumn of 1859 or the spring of 
i860, when I was working in the schools of the Royal 
Academy, that a tall, rather gaunt young man arrived as a 
nouveau, who excited among us of a term's seniority some 
interest. He was an original, that was evident at starting. His 
capacious forehead denoted power, his grey eyes tenderness, his 
delicately formed nose refinement, and his jaw strength. But 
the commanding characteristic was unmistakably humour. He 
spoke with a curious accent, his voice, as if it had never quite 
settled to be soprano or bass, moved with flexibility up and down 
the scale, and every sentence was finished with a certain drawl. 
This was a trait caught by many of Rossetti's friends. This 
youth was William de Morgan, son of the celebrated mathema- 
tician and his wife, a distinguished lady, highly cultivated, 
intimate friend of Carlyle and other leaders of the thought of the 
times, and much loved by her friends. 

He came into the schools at a brilliant moment. Fred Walker, 
that delicately organized genius, was his senior by one term. 
Albert Moore, perhaps the most classic painter of the time, was 
already drawing with great taste in the schools and making noble 
designs, some pre-Raphaelite, some classical. Andrew Donaldson 
promised much as a student. Henry Holiday was precocious ; 
but the greatest genius of our set was S. Solomon, that wonderful 
little Jew who might have risen to any height of distinction if he 
had chosen to encourage his great gifts. I was the youngest of 
the group which was composed of ardent young men furnished 
with ability and determination to labour hard to deserve dis- 
tinction. It was in this coterie that William De Morgan found 
himself welcomed. From the day I first shook hands with him 
till the last, when he sat beside me in sickness, we were close and 
staunch friends. 

As an Academic artist he did not count for much : his genius 
did not lie in a groove or grooves. His early work was as a 
designer for stained glass ; I have seen some very interesting 

9 



10 PREFACE 

work from his hand in that difficult branch of the art into which 
incompetence too often strays and where genius is so rarely 
visible. De Morgan, as a son of a great man and a very popular 
and highly esteemed mother, was early thrown into the intellec- 
tual blue. Well grounded at King's College {sic) he was a fair 
classical scholar, but it was not in any portion of his character 
created by education that he was remarkable. Pre-eminently 
he was original, entirely uncommonplace. He had a quaint 
invention, he took a quaint view of everything. He was a master 
of the unexpected, a creator of paradox, a serious humorist. A 
very delicate constitution forbade athletics of all kinds. His body 
had to beware of excess, his mind could adroitly play with it. 
Public opinion he cared for not a jot ; he was his own critic in as 
much as he always strove for perfection. The progress of his 
mind was swift as well as persistent ; a bit of wire, a bit of wood 
provided hours of enjoyment for his creative mind, one moment 
dwelling on a vast scheme for fiying or under-water piracy, 
another in adding some dehcacy to the construction of his bicycle. 

His extreme ingenuity may have been not altogether an 
advantage, it made him jump from one subject to another with too 
facile dexterity. He was not what is commonly called brilliant, 
it was natural rhetoric ; he never talked for effect. So simply 
and oddly was his very simple mind arranged that he could play 
with his ideas and command them to quaintness or paradox, as he 
wished, without ever rendering them ridiculous. In this respect 
De Morgan was Dickens's equal, the Dickens that he knew so well 
and so deeply admired, but with no plagiarism. As Dickens's 
characters are his and only his, so are De Morgan's. Nobody 
else has ever made quainter people to sa}^ quainter things, which, 
however, are never forced but just bubble out as the stream of a 
character moves on. 

De Morgan's wTiting has been compared with Thackeray's, 
but surely on close investigation there is little if any similarity. 
De Morgan was in no sense a satirist : he was a humorist, he was 
no cynic, he was a playful, wayward optimist who saw kindly, 
conceived generously, and was much nearer comedy than tragedy. 
Pathos there was, but of a type quite his own ; not of the stage 
one bit, but entirely employed in a kind of unconscious manner 
out of the character he was manipulating with such quaint Unes 
and elaborate byplay. 

Literature, or rather novel writing, is, on the whole, more 
universally estimated and valued than any other form of Art by 
the general public ; it is therefore likely that De Morgan will 
live in the future more by reason of his writings than his designs 
or superb pottery. He will live among his friends as a delightful 
companion, a queer unexpected talker, not exactly brilliant, but 
fantastic, if child-like, by reason of a certain siraphcity which took 



PREFACE II 

for granted he could never be a bore, and he never could be, for, 
clever as he was, ready tongued as he was, a freshness was always 
maintained which one knew to be quite spontaneous, unaffected 
and sincere. 

His Wife and He 

Although WiUiam De Morgan was complete as a personality 
in which each part bore relation to the whole, he was made even 
more highly finished by the remarkable woman he married and 
who outlived him but for a short time. 

I knew her before her marriage, both in London and in 
Florence, where she lived so much with her uncle, Spencer- 
Stanhope, who no doubt was her guide, philosopher and friend in 
most things, and to whose influence was certainly due the direc- 
tion that her great gifts as a draughtsman and painter took. It 
is seldom that a marriage is absolutely successful, where the road 
of life taken is so similar, where the temperaments are completely 
in accord, and where no commonplace rubs against life's sharp 
and tiresome edges ever occur. Evelyn and William De Morgan 
were absolutely one: one in sympathy, in intelligence and its 
direction, one in tastes, and in perfect companionship. They 
teased and chaffed one another as school-boys do, they were 
amused at each other's idiosyncrasies, and I verily believe amused 
also at their mental similarity. He believed in her Art and she 
in his. They were both artistic in the highest sense, and where 
the business capacity came in is a puzzle to every one. She had 
more than he. His capacity as a business man was probably nil, 
hers was only a little more than nil ; but her money was his, and, 
with what is often called generosity, she gave it up, as all his and 
her friends know, to save crashes and to make one more glorious 
pot. 

It is not for me to relate her life, it is written in this book ; 
its splendid dedication to Art and to her husband, her constant 
going on fighting non-success, always making fresh efforts to 
achieve perfection of finish and technique as noble as it was 
strong, as consistent as constant. If her later work is sometimes 
overcharged with detail, a little over-weight, Evelyn De Morgan 
was a finished artist of no mean quality. In their respective 
spheres, he had the humour, the irresponsibility ; she supplied 
sometimes an almost austere integrity and a conscientiousness, 
carried sometimes so far as to mask slightly the spontaneity of 
her just conception. She drew beautifully ; indeed, the many 
volumes which remain containing drawings of the nude, and 
draperies, flowers, leaves — in short all things inanimate — are, 
perhaps, the most complete efforts of her genius. . . . 



12 PREFACE 

Thus far had Sir William Richmond written when death inter- 
vened, and this unfinished tribute to his friends remains the last 
thing ever traced by his pen. 

He had, according to what he once mentioned to the author, 
intended to dwell at far greater length on the arresting personality of 
Evelyn De Morgan, on her achievement as an artist, especially on 
the marvel and the purity of her colouring, and on her rich inspira- 
tion. Yet the faithfulness of both incomplete portraits, drawn thus 
in a few facile words, will be apparent to all who knew those of whom 
he writes : while in this connexion, as certain of his observations may 
he found duplicated in the volume which follows, it should be men- 
tioned that the preface was designedly written without its writer having 
seen the work of the biographer ; and vice versa. 

Only in one particular, however, is a brief elucidation perhaps 
desirable. The austerity of which he speaks in connexion with 
Evely7i refers solely to her earnestness in regard to work. Both in 
art and literature, De Morgan's spontaneity and his happy-go-lucky 
methods — equally the outcome of a great sincerity — contrast with her 
profound and studied conscientiousness : but apart from work, the 
sense of humour shared by both was one of their 7nost marked 
characteristics. Evelyn had a quick wit, an irrepressible sense of 
the ludicrous, and a rare gift as a raconteuse. Even in her most 
serious mood, her sense of fun would not be suppressed, and a jest, 
known only to the initiated, peeps from the canvas of her gravest con- 
ceptions. To both of them, if life proved, in much, a sorry struggle 
owing to their disinterested pursuit of an Ideal, combined with their 
entire lack of worldly wisdom and self-advertisement, it was, in more, 
a merry adventure to be regarded with laughter in the present and a 
somewhat misty but enduring hopefulness for that Future which no 
man can fathom. 

When, late in middle-age, success came to De Morgan, he rejoiced 
in it with the simplicity and the freshness of a child. To Evelyn all 
celebrity was hateful, and she valued appreciation only as it proved 
an incentive to greater effort. Work, to her, was the joy of existence, 
and she laboured — voluntarily, unceasingly — from the cradle to the 
grave. ' I knew them for twenty years,' relates one friend, ' and I 
never heard her mention her painting. ' She had an exquisite and 
a retiring mind,' her obituary stated when that life-work was done. 

It is unusual to find two people, so gifted and so entirely in 
harmony in their art, who acted and re-acted on each other's genius. 
Their romance is one before which the pen falters : but which, never- 
theless, was an abiding factor in all they have left to the world : and 
Sir Edward Poyntcr, P.R.A., looking after De Morgan and his wife 
one day, as they left his beautiful garden, epitomized the impression 
created by their presence. 'There,' he said, 'go two of the rarest 
spirits of the Age.' 



AUTHOR'S NOTE 

THE author wishes to express her sincere thanks to all who 
have aided her in procuring material for the following 
work. 

In America her thanks are due to many unknown but valued 
friends ; particularly to Professor Lyon Phelps for his assistance 
and cordial sympathy ; to Mr. Louis Joseph Vance for the in- 
teresting letters he lent ; to Miss Olive Russell and others for 
their contributions of some charming correspondence. 

In England the author's thanks are primarily due to Miss May 
Morris ; to Mr. Reginald Blunt, Mr. Halsey Ricardo and Mr. 
Shaw Sparrow for the correspondence and information they 
supplied respecting the manufacture of the pottery ; to Mr. 
Richard De Morgan and Mr. Walter Kelsall for assistance with 
the early history of the family ; to Mr. Amherst Tyssen for the 
extracts from his diary ; to Professor and Mrs. Mackail, and to 
Mr. Henry Holiday and his family for many delightful letters and 
anecdotes. Thanks are also due to Mary, Countess of Lovelace ; 
to Miss F. Seeley, Mrs. Spencer Pickering, and Mr. Herbert 
Russell-Cotes for permission to reproduce pictures in their posses- 
sion ; to the authorities of the Victoria and Albert Museum for 
their leave to publish photographs of the De Morgan pottery in 
their charge ; and to Mrs. E. Smith {nee Ethel Glazebrook) for the 
fine photograph taken by her of William De Morgan. 

The author also wishes to express her thanks to the editors 
of the Burlington Magazine, the Bookman, the Cornhill, the 
Manchester Guardian, Printer's Pie, The World's Work, and the 
New York Herald for their great courtesy in allowing her to quote 
from articles which have appeared in their publications : likewise 
to Mr. Pawling for having kindly placed at her disposal Mr. De 
Morgan's correspondence with the late Mr. Wilham Heinemann. 

Her gratitude is also due to many others who have aided her 
materially by contributing correspondence or information, par- 
ticularly to the following : Mrs. Alhngham, Mr. Stewart EUis, 
Deaconess Gilmore (the sister of William Morris), Mr. H. de T. 
Glazebrook, Lady Glenconner, the Rev. Augustus De Morgan 
Hensley, Mrs. Horatio Lucas, Mr. Walter De Morgan, Mr. Scott- 
Moncrieff, Mrs. Bram Stoker, Mrs. G. F. Watts, Mrs. HughWoolner, 

13 



14 AUTHOR'S NOTE 

etc. ; and to Mrs. Edward Carpenter and Mr. Lionel Bradgate 
M.A., of Trinity College, Oxford, for kindly reading the proofs.' 
If, however, among the great number of those who have 
written to her from all parts of the world it has been impossible 
to mention categorically the names of aU to whom she is indebted 
or for lack of space to make use of some of the interesting material 
which they provided, she trusts they will understand that in 
writing this book (an endeavour to compress into one volume 'the 
story of two full and many-sided lives), she has suffered consider- 
ably from what William De Morgan termed ' the true writer's 
cramp.' and that they wiU forgive her sins of omission as weU as 
01 commission. 



LIST OF CONTENTS 



Preface. By the late Sir William Richmond, R.A. 

CHAP. WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

I Ancestry and Parentage • • . . 
II A Nursery Journal . . . . . 



III The Old Man's Youth . . . 

IV The Chelsea Period • . . . 

V The JVIerton Period . , . . 

EVELYN DE MORGAN 

VI The Story of the Pickerings . 
V,I Pen-drift {to be omitted by the captious). 

VIII The Thorny Way . . . . 



WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

IX The Fulham Period 
X Joseph Vance 
XI The Man and the Method 
XII ' Alice ' and ' Sally ' 
Kill The ' Real Janey ' 
XIV ' Blind Jim ' and ' Lucinda 
XV Several ' Unlikely Stories 
XVI ' The Young Man's Old Age ' 
XVII The 'Long Diminuendo' 

Index . • . • • 



and ' Ghosts' 



PAGB 
9 



21 

38 

51 

82 

102 



153 

173 



199 
230 

261 
276 
308 
313 
336 

359 

377 
391 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



FULL PAGE 
William De Morgan, aetat. 76 (in Photogravure) 



Frontispiece 

FACING 
PAGE 

. . 56 

. 72 

. . 84 



The Sons of Professor De Morgan . . . . „ 
Sketch in imitation of Caravaggio, by E. Burne-Jones 
The Alchemist's Daughter, picture by William De Morgan . 
Tile, by William De Morgan, in the possession of Mr. Ilalsey 

Ricardo 88 

Lustre bottle, by William De Morgan ..... 96 
Letter written by William De Morgan to his cousin. Miss Fanny 

Seeley . . . . . . . . , . 104 

Lustre bowl, by William De Morgan ...... 120 

A Peacock, a dish ......... 126 

Boreas and the Dying Leaves, picture by Evelyn De Morgan • 136 

A Panel of Six Tiles 150 

The Daughters of the Mist, picture by Evelyn De Morgan . • 160 

The Storm-Spirits, picture by Evelyn De Morgan . , • 166 

The Mater Dolorosa, sculpture by Evelyn De Morgan . .,• 176 

Medusa in bronze, sculpture by Evelyn De Morgan . . . 186 

Aurora Triumphans, picture by Evelyn De Morgan . . • 192 

Love's Passing, picture by Evelyn De Morgan .... 200 

Vase in gold and silver lustre, by William De Morgan . . 216 

The god Pan, in pottery, by William De Morgan , . . 224 

The pottery marks, and a panel in relief, by William De Morgan 228 
Saint Christina giving her father's jewels to the poor, picture by 

Evelyn De Morgan . . ..... 232 

The Little Sea-maid, picture by Evelyn De Morgan . . . 240 

The Five Mermaids, picture by Evelyn De Morgan . . .. 248 

The Valley of Shadows, picture by Evelyn De Morgan . . 260 

William De Morgan, from a photograph ...... 264 

'Persian" Vase ......... 272 

\n Antelope ...... 9 .. . 284 



17 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING 
PAGE 

Queen Eleanor and Fair Rosamund, picture by Evelyn De Morgan 296 
The Sleeping Earth and Wakening Moon, picture by Evelyn De 

Morgan 308 

The Garden of Opportunity, picture by Evelyn De Morgan . . 310 

The Poor Man who saved the City, picture by Evelyn De Morgan 312 

Portrait of William De Morgan, by Evelyn De Morgan . . 316 

No. I, The Vale, Chelsea, from a photograph ..... 320 

Helen of Troy, picture by Evelyn De Morgan .... 344 

The Worship of Mammon, picture by Evelyn De Morgan . . 358 

The Moonbeams dipping into the Sea, picture by Evelyn De Morgan 368 
Headstone for the grave of William De Morgan, designed by 

Evelyn De Jvlorgan .....,,.,. 376 

In Memoriam, picture by Evelyn De Morgan . ,. . ., 386 



ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT 



PAGE 



Composite monogram for himself and his wife, designed by 
William De Morgan ..... Below dedication 

Sketch by William De Morgan of Eagle and Rabbit ... 14 
" An Earl riding on a Caterpillar," sketch by William De Morgan 50 
Mrs. Bale, pen-sketch by William De Morgan, setat. 16 . -55 
Sketches by E. Burne-Jones for the game of " Cartoons " 

66, 67, 68, 69, 70 
Signature of E. Burne-Jones ....... 72 

Sketch in pencil by William De Morgan, " At the Stores " . . loi 

Sketch by William De Morgan entitled " The Present Shape of 

the Wellington Statue" . . . . . . .119 

Sketches by William De Morgan in a letter to Margaret Burne- 
Jones .......... 123, 124 

Sketch by William De Morgan in a letter to E. Burne-Jones, 

"Data" 130 

Pencil sketch in a note-book by William De Morgan, " Une De- 

mande en Mariage" ........ 131 

" Hanging Day," a sketch in pencil by William De Morgan . . 152 

"James Lee's Wife," sketch in a note-book by William De Mor- 
gan after reading Robert Browning ..... 307 

Two-legged dragon tail-piece, by William De Morgan . . . 335 



WILLIAM 
DE MORGAN 



CHAPTER I 

ANCESTRY AND PARENTAGE 

1710-1839 

THE immediate ancestors of William De Morgan are described 
as Anglo-Indians, although they were of French descent. 
Unfortunately Colonel De Morgan, his grandfather, sent all the 
family documents on board a ship bound for England, called the 
Pondicherry, which went to the bottom ; and among the papers 
which then perished were some of great interest dating prior to 
the period when the Edict of Nantes forced the Huguenot De 
Morgans to fly from their native country. The publication of 
Mrs. Penny's history of Fort St. George recalled to William De 
Morgan a fact which he had then forgotten, namely that his 
great-great-grandfather, John De Morgan, was a native-bom 
Frenchman who married a French wife, and that this man's son 
Augustus, by birth a Frenchman, married a Dane ! ' However,' 
was William's comment, ' we are English enough now ! ' 

There are many Celtic names still to be found with the French 
prefix in Brittany and Normandy ; but the practice of inscribing 
the ' De ' with a capital letter has become distinctive of this 
particular branch of the De Morgan family. An apparently 
apocryphal story runs that William's father, the celebrated 
mathematician, Professor De Morgan, declared emphatically that 
he was an Englishman, and that if there was, unluckily, a foreign 
prefix attached to his name, it should be treated as part of the 
surname. On one occasion Sir John Herschel, writing to him, 
apologized for enclosing a letter in which the correspondent 
referred to him as ' the well-known de Morgorgon,' to which the 
Professor replied : — 

' As to the little dees, and Morgorgon, it is not the first time ! — My 
old friend Parish (the Professor's son) could not call me anything else ! — 
It went against his conscience to the day of his death. " But why is the 
gentleman not called de Morgorgon ? " — I am constantly tempted to make 
a mistake in one Greek name because in the second-hand book hsts it 
always comes after mine. Look in any book-list of a miscellaneous 
character, and you will see the following : — 

De Moivre 

De Morgan 

De Mosthenes.' 
21 



22 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

The record of the paternal forefathers of William De Morgan, 
however, as far as this can now be traced, shows them to have 
been possessed of war-like propensities rather than any inclination 
towards literature or art. John De Morgan, previously referred 
to, presumably impoverished by the misfortunes of his family, is 
supposed to have followed a practice much resorted to at that 
date by men of birth and education, great numbers of whom 
entered the service of the East India Company as private soldiers 
in order to secure what was otherwise almost impossible of 
attainment — a passage out in the Company's ships; their 
subsequent objective being to gain a Commission by passing 
through the ranks. John is said to have dropped the De, which 
his son afterwards revived, and landing in India July ii, 1710, 
from on board the Bouverie, he became Sergeant in the garrison 
of Fort St. George. In 1715 he was made Ensign for his bravery 
in action, and later he became Governor of Forts St. David and 
Ajengo, occasionally acting in the same capacity at Fort St. 
George. When he retired in 1748, he was the first military man 
to be granted a pension for long and distinguished service ; and 
he died, a fine old veteran, in 1760, his burial taking place in 
Publicat, where his tomb, with its Latin epitaph, may be seen in 
the quaint Dutch cemetery. 

While still an Ensign, John De Morgan had married twice, 
both wives being French women, but only by the second, Mrs. 
Turbevdlle,^ did he have issue, a family of five daughters and 
four sons. 

The former were perhaps remarkable for the fact that they all 
married, the eldest three times, and three out of the remaining 
four twice ; so that innumerable descendants soon existed of the 
veteran, John De Morgan, many of whom likewise gave their 
services to promote the w^elfare of the British Empire in India. 
Of his sons, however, only one survived him, Augustus, bom in 
1739, who became an officer in the Artillery and married Christina, 
the Danish lady before mentioned, a daughter of the Rev. Conrade 
Huttemann. 

This young pair were foredoomed to tragedy. Christina died 
in 1774, and, three months after, her infant son was buried in the 
same grave in a lonely fort at Ganjam. Four years later, her 
husband, then aged thirty-nine, with two other officers, was 
blo\vn up in a battery at the taking of Pondicherry, a name which 
seemed of ill-omen to his family. 

' The name, according to the laxity in spelling of those days, is entered 
variously as Turville and Tivill in the records. John Tivill was ' Chief ' 
of Masulipatam, our first settlement on tlie coast of India ; but property 
belonging to the Tubervilles, was left in the charge of St. Mary's Vestry, 
and Mrs. John De Morgan's grandson claimed this property as heir at 
law, and made good his claim. 



ANCESTRY AND PARENTAGE 23 

A curious story has been told in connexion with Captain De 
Morgan's death. It is said that, on the morning of the fatal day, 
he distinctly foretold that he and his two companions would 
perish in the engagement which was about to take place. Further, 
so convinced was he of the truth of his prediction, that he made 
his will which, in confirmation of the tale, bears the date of his 
decease. This story has been cited as a remarkable instance of 
the fulfilment of a presentiment, but a little investigation robs it 
of its uncanny element. The fact was that Captain De Morgan, 
a clever and observant officer, had noted that the battery which 
he was to command was unduly exposed owing to its faulty con- 
struction. He represented this to the engineer officers and to the 
Commander-in-Chief without avail ; the engineers denied the 
truth of his statement and the Commander sided with them. So 
Captain De Morgan went bravely to his death, aware that the 
engagement must end fatally for himself and his two companions 
who were posted with him, and in the disaster which occurred 
his head was severed from his body by a cannon which bore the 
euphonious name of ' Sweet-lips. ' But it was left to his grandson, 
many years later, to remark what was actually the curious aspect 
of the story — that a gallant soldier constantly exposed to death, 
did not consider any danger save a flaw in engineering to be a 
sufficient reason for making his will ! 

Of the three sons of that ill-starred couple — the Frenchman 
Augustus and his Danish wife — two lived to man's estate. Both 
entered the army ; George Augustus, the elder, who was in the 
Madras Cavalry, took part in an action against Tippoo's troops in 
1792, and disappeared. His body was never found, but nothing 
was ever heard of him subsequently. The other surviving son, 
John, born in 1772, became an officer in the 22nd Madras Infantry. 

This later John, afterwards Colonel De Morgan, while stiU a 
lieutenant, married in 1798, in Colombo, Elizabeth Dodson, one 
of the eleven children and nine daughters of John Dodson of the 
Custom House, London, and granddaughter of James Dodson, 
F.R.S., a noted mathematician of his day, author of the Anti- 
Logarithm's Canon. 

The untoward fate, however, which at this date dogged the 
footsteps of the De Morgans, pursued John and Elizabeth. Of 
their seven children the two eldest when quite young were dis- 
patched to England, in June, 1804, on board the Prince of Wales, 
an East Indiaman. The ship was caught in a storm and wrecked 
off the Cape, and the two boys presumably perished ; but no 
conclusive proof of their death was ever obtained, any more than 
had been the case with their uncle, George Augustus ; and the 
uncertainty of their fate always preyed on the mind of their un- 
happy mother and of the father, who was so soon to foUow them. 

It was two years after this tragic event, on June 27, 1806, 



24 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

that Augustus, the fifth child of this couple, and the future 
celebrated mathematician, was born at Madura, in the l^Iadras 
Presidency. His father had held Staff appointments at several 
stations in India, and at the time when his wife was expecting 
the birth of this son, he chose Madura in preference to Vellore on 
account of its superior quietness. This choice proved fortunate 
for himself, as the native troops of the battalion of his regiment, 
which was at Vellore, mutinied, and in the terrible outbreak 
which followed. Colonel Fanshawe, who commanded it in his 
place, was murdered with several other English officers. 

Even in the comparative peace of Madura, night after night 
Colonel De Morgan would creep stealthily out of bed to listen to 
the conversation of the Sepoys in order to learn if a like fate 
threatened himself and his helpless wife and children. In con- 
sequence of the continued unrest in India, when Augustus was 
seven months old, his father determined no longer to risk the 
danger of a residence there for those he loved, and returned to 
England with his wiie, two small daughters, and his infant son. 
On this decision primarily hinged the fact that the long military 
record of his family was broken, and that Augustus, and in due 
course the latter's son, William De Morgan, did not follow the 
profession to which all their predecessors and most of their con- 
temporary relations belonged, but became instead peaceful 
civilians. 

After settling his family in England — first at Worcester, later 
in Devonshire, and finally at Taunton, Somersetshire — Colonel 
De Morgan twice re- visited India. On the last occasion he went 
to take command of a battalion at Quinton, but tv/o years after- 
wards, in 1816, he was ordered home on account of ill-health, 
and a brief record notes that 'he died at sea on board the 
Company's ship Larking two days af+er passing the Cape ' — not 
far from the locality where, twelve years previously, his two 
eldest sons had presumably perished. A rigid Evangelical in 
tenets and practice — a heritage, doubtless, from his Huguenot 
ancestry — Colonel De Morgan was known to his fellow officers 
by the nickname of ' Bible John,' and in a review which appeared 
shortly after his death he was described as the ' friend of Chris- 
tianity in India.' In connexion with this phrase, a curious incident 
occurred forty years afterwards, to which we shall refer later. 

Elizabeth De Morgan, left with a young family of four surviving 
children, appears to have brought them up strictl}^ but well. To 
Augustus, her eldest living son, she was devoted, and describes 
him as a quiet, thoughtful boy, never so well pleased as when he 
could get her to listen to his reading and explanations, ' always 
speculating on things that nobody else thought of, and asking her 
questions far beyond her power to answer ' — characteristics 
which were inherited, in turn, by his own children. 



ANCESTRY AND PARENTAGE 25 

The boy, however, suffered under one great affliction. At 
birth he had lost the sight of his right eye, owing to the com- 
plaint known as ' sore eye ' in India, and this proving a handicap 
to his taking part in active games, doubtless enhanced his natural 
love of study. He likewise exhibited great musical talent ; even 
as a small child so sensitive was his ear, that a discordant note 
sounded upon the piano would make him start and shiver as ii 
in pain ; and he early learnt to play upon the flute most ex- 
quisitely. But, for a time, none seem to have suspected the 
existence of that other inheritance which was to make him 
celebrated, neither, apparently, might it have been looked upon 
with unqualified approval by his relations. His wife relates : — 

' From his mother he inherited his musical talent, and probably hig 
mathematical power, for she was the granddaughter of James Dodson, a 
distinguished mathematician, the friend of Demoivre, and of most of the 
men of science of his time, and an early F.R.S. But he was Mathematical 
Master at Christ's Hospital, and some of his descendants seem to have 
thought this a blot on the scutcheon, for his great-grandson has left on 
record the impression he had of his ancestor. When quite a boy he 
asked one of his aunts "who James Dodson was ? " and received for answer 
" We never cry stinking fish / " so he was afraid to ask any more questions, 
but settled that, somehow or other, James Dodson was the " stinking 
fish of his family," and he had to wait a few years to find out that his 
great-grandfather was the only one of his immediate ancestors whose 
name would be held deserving of record.' 

The first suspicion of Augustus having inherited the osten- 
sibly reprehensible proclivity of this maternal forbear was 
due to a mere chance. An old friend of his family, Mr. Hugh 
Standert, of Taunton, noticed one day that the boy was very busy 
making a neat figure with ruler and compasses, and finding that 
the essence of the proposition which was being evolved was 
supposed to lie in its accurate geometrical drawing, he asked the 
little lad a few pertinent questions respecting it. Augustus 
replied that he was drawing mathematics. ' That's not mathema- 
tics ! ' said his friend. ' Come, and I will show you what is.' 
' So,' relates his wife, ' the lines and angles were rubbed out, and 
the future mathematician, greatly surprised by finding that he 
had missed the aim of Euclid, was soon intent on the first demon- 
stration he ever knew the meaning of. I do not think that Mr. 
Standert was instrumental in further bringing out the latent 
power ; but its owner had become in some degree aware of the 
mine of wealth that only required working . . . and from that 
time his great delight was to work out questions which were often 
as much his own as their solution.' 

In this Qveni one recognizes the origin of an incident in one 
Df his son's novels to which we shall refer in due course. Mean- 
ivhile it is strange to relate that, although Augustus soon ' read 
/Algebra like a novel,' and ' picked out equations on the School 



26 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

pew instead of listening to the sermon on Sunday,' the exist enc< 
of any abnormal mathematical talent remained unsuspected bj 
those who taught him. 

In due course he went to Cambridge, where, being of a sociabk 
disposition, he soon became extremely popular. His flute proved 
an unfailing source of pleasure to his many friends who, we are 
told, quickly learnt to love him ' for his genial kindness, unwilling- 
ness to find fault, and quiet love of fun.' At every turn one 
recognizes in him the characteristics afterwards conspicuous in 
his eldest son — the quaint humour, the habit of quiet observa- 
tion, the love of analysis and tortuous reasoning, of intricate 
problems and half-facetious solutions in which he seems almosi 
making mock of his own questioning ; above all, his complete 
indifference to the world's opinion combined with an unvarying 
benevolence of outlook which involved a kindly view of all 
humanity. 

As to his peculiarities, his contemporaries remarked ' his 
habit of reading through a great part of the night, and in conse- 
quence getting up very late the next day, so that his fellow- 
collegians coming home from a wine-party at four in the morning 
might find him just going to bed.' Nor were these excursions 
into literature necessarily of a serious nature. In view of after- 
events it is interesting to note, ' his insatiable appetite for novel 
reading, always a great relaxation in his leisure time, and doubt- 
less a useful rest to an over-active brain in the case of one who did 
not care for riding or boating. Let it be good or bad from a 
literary point of view, almost any woik of fiction was welcome, 
provided it had plenty of incident and dialogue, and w^as not 
over-sentimental. . . . He soon exhausted the stores of the 
circulating library in Cambridge.' In short, Augustus himself 
relates : ' I did with Trinity College Library what I afterwards 
did with my own — I foraged for relaxation. I read an enormous 
amount of fiction — all I could get hold of, so my amusement was 
not all philosophical ! ' 

At length came the question of choosing a profession. 
Augustus was offered a cadetship, but his defective eyesight 
caused his mother to veto this ; and his conscientious inability 
to subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles debarred him from 
taking Orders. He hesitated between Medicine or the Bar, 
eventually choosing the latter on his mother's urgent recom- 
mendation to 'throw physic to the dogs.' Nevertheless he felt 
that he had not yet found his true place in the world's workshop, 
and ere long he gladly seized upon the first opportunity of escap- 
ing from a profession which was likewise uncongenial to him. 

' About, or before, the year 1820,' relates his wife, ' some liberal- 
ninded men, after long pondering on the disabilities of Jews and Dissenters 
n gaining a good education, came to the conclusion that as the doors of 



ANCESTRY AND PARENTAGE 27 

the two Univeirsities were closed against them, the difficulty could best 
be met by estabhshing a University in which the highest Academical 
teaching should be given without reference to religious differences. . . . 
The establishment of University College, called at first the London Univer- 
sity, promised to fulfil the hopes of all friends of education, and was hailed 
as a forerunner of religious freedom.' Mr. De Morgan, whose activity 
did much to bring this to pass, ' welcomed the opening of the Q)Uege 
(in 1826-7) as not only meeting a great want of the time, but as offering 
himself a prospect of leaving the study of the Law which he did not like 
for the study and pursuit of Science. When the time came he sent in 
his name as candidate for the Mathematical Chair. 

' It was characteristic that while the momentous decision was going 
forward on which all his future hinged, the candidate picked up a novel 
which was l}n.ng on the table before him and became so absorbed in its 
contents that he forgot aU beside. The book in question was Miss Porter's 
Field of the Forty Footsteps, and the scene of it is laid in the memorable 
fields which formed the site of the new College and its surroundings. 
Augustus had run tlirough the entire volume before the news reached 
him that, out of thirty-two candidates he, the youngest, had been elected 
to the coveted post.' 

Nevertheless, in thus changing his profession Augustus acted 
in opposition alike to the wishes of his family, and to those of his 
many friends who had predicted a brilliant career for him at the 
Bar, and who regarded his present decision as a regrettable 
sacrifice on his part. But above his natural inclination for the 
work involved, he maintained that the ' upholding of a high 
principle was a more weighty consideration than worldly success 
or affluence ' ; and with a cheerful optimism he announced his 
determination to ' keep to the Sciences so long as they will feed 
me I' 



Before this date, it must be observed, Augustus De Morgan 
had been recognized, not merely as a leading mathematician, but 
as a rising young scientist and brilliant logician. It was in this 
capacity that he made his entry among the circle of those who 
visited William Frend, likewise a distinguished mathematician, 
and a man whose remarkable personality may be presumed to 
have largely influenced that of his descendants, so that we must 
pause a moment to glance at his antecedents. 

William Frend came of a family whose ancestors had been 
seated at Waltham for many generations, and whose pedigree, 
with interesting ramifications, dates back to the early fifteenth 
century. His father, George, however, was a younger son, and 
in those days it was the fashion to differentiate considerably 
between the upbringing of the elder and the younger members 
of a family — to spare no pains in the education of the heir, who 
was instructed in all the polite arts which might enable him to 
figure effectively in the great world, while his brothers often 
received a homely education and were apprenticed to a trade. 



28 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

Thus George Frend eventu<ally settled in Canterbury in the 
capacity of banker and wine-merchant, being subsequently twice 
elected Mayor of that city. But he was a man of high intellectual 
gifts who was soon recognized by his contemporaries as a scholai 
and a thinker ; while so little was he infected with the spirit oi 
commerce that, when he beheved a certain duty on wine to be 
unjust, he broke open his casks and let the contents run along 
the streets of Canterbury. 

Nevertheless, George Frend at first destined his son for a 
mercantile profession, and on the lad leaving school sent him to a 
firm in Quebec with this object. The experiment did not last 
long ; the War of Independence broke out, the youth of sixteen 
was pressed into the Service, and such was his bravery and gallant 
bearing that it was desired to retain him in the army ; but he 
preferred the life of a scholar, and journeying back to England 
begged his father to allow him to enter the Ministry. In 1776, at 
the age of eighteen, he therefore entered Christ's College, Cam- 
bridge, where, for some time, Paley was his tutor. His subse- 
quent career was as brilliant as it was stormy. On taking his 
degi-ee in 1780, he moved to Jesus College, where he became 
Fellow and Tutor. He likewise received an offer to proceed to 
St. Petersburg as tutor to the future Czar Alexander, but he 
declined this lucrative post, which was afterwards filled by La 
Harpe. Instead, relates his granddaughter, ' he entered the 
Church in obedience to the dictates of conscience, though from 
the same cause he felt constrained to sever his connexion with it 
later on. He held his incumbency for four years, during which 
time his religious opinions underwent so great a change that he 
found it to be his duty to separate himself from the Church at 
whatever risk to his own prospects and the friendship of those he 
left behind.' 

William Frend soon paid the penalty of an honest expression 
of his views, and was expelled from his post of College Tutor for 
his so-called heterodox opinions. Subsequently he became an 
Actuary, one of the first of that calling, and nine j'-ears before the 
battle of Waterloo he began doing actuarial work for the Rock 
Insurance Company. He was near fifty when he married Sarah 
Blackburne, daughter of the Rev. Francis Blackburne, Rector of 
Brignall, Yorkshire, a lady whose antecedents deserve more than 
the passing notice which can here be accorded to them. Although 
a daughter of a clergyman of the Church of England, her tradi- 
tions in many ways resembled those of her husband. Her 
grandfather was the famous Archdeacon Blackburne who had 
issued a publication advocating a more simple pledge at ordina- 
tion, and who personally refused all further preferment on the 
grounds that his conscience forbade him to subscribe again. He 
was of the same family as that romantic personality, Lancelot 



ANCESTRY AND PARENTAGE 29 

Blackburne, the buccaneer Archbishop of York, who is s^id to 
have ' gained more hearts than souls ' ; ^ and also of Alice 
Thornton, daughter of Christopher Wandersworth, Lord Deputy 
of Ireland, in 1640, whose autobiography, published by the 
Surtees Society, forms one of the most curious and interesting 
documents descriptive of the troubled times in which she lived. 
What, however, is of greater interest to our present purpose 
to note is that Sarah Blackburne, although never a professional 
artist, has left work which shows her to have been possessed of 
remarkable artistic genius ; and presumably from her her grand- 
son that-was-to-be inherited his powers of draughtsmanship. 

At the date when Augustus De Morgan first made the acquain- 
tance of William Frend and his family, the Actuary was living in 
a fine old house adjacent to fields which extended beyond King's 
Cross. This dwelling, at one time the home of the gentle and 
pedantic Dr. Isaac Watts, had also, in the seventeenth century, 
been the residence of Defoe ; and in a large oak-panelled room 
there was a secret doorway and staircase by means of which its 
once-unquiet occupant used to escape from his political persecu- 
tors. During more peaceful days, in happy discussion imder the 
magnificent trees in the lovely old-world garden, Augustus De 
Morgan first learnt the value of a subsequently treasured friend- 
ship. Between himself and the Actuary, though separated in 
years by half a century, there soon sprang up a strong bond of 
union. Not only were both keen scientists and eager mathema- 
ticians, but both were men of profound religious convictions who 
had sacrificed worldly success to their love of truth. Both had 
battled courageously against the system of Religious Tests in 
matters of education and preferment. Both were men of 
penetrating intellect, fearless honesty and flawless sincerity. 
Throughout his life Augustus De Morgan always spoke of William 
Frend as ' the noblest man he had ever known ' — an opinion 
which seems to have been shared by all who came under the speU 
of the fine old philosopher. 

Long since have vanished the majestic trees beneath which 
the two scientists then paced ; ugly modern buildings have re- 
placed that hospitable house and spacious garden, and the name 
Defoe Street alone marks the transfigured locality where the home 
of Wilham Frend once stood. But to the end of his days Augustus 
De Morgan was destined to cherish a tender recollection of the 

» In an Edition of Byron's work, 1815, given by Lady Byron to William 
Frend, there is an interesting account of the Archbishop in a note to The 
Corsair. He bequeathed his sword, a fine Andrea Ferrara, to Archdeacon 
Blackburne, the great-great-grandfather of William De Morgan, and it 
was recently presented to the Archbishop's old College, Christ Church, 
Oxford, by Miss Constance Phillott, William De Morgan's first cousin. 



30 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

happy hours spent there, for the dawning of romance soon lured 
his steps again and again to the spot. It is not known at what 
date there first sprang up an attachment between the young 
Professor and Sophia, the eldest daughter of William Frond ; 
but the story of their first meeting is best told in her own words : — 

' Mr. De Morgan first came to our house with Mr. Stratford [who, like 
Mr. Frend, was a member of the old Mathematical and sivbsequently of 
the Astronomical Society]. He then looked so much older than he was 
that we were surprised by hearing his real age — just twenty-one. I was 
nineteen. We soon found out that this " rising man " of whom great 
things were expected in Science, and who had evidently read so much, 
could rival us in love of fun, fairy-tales, and ghost-stories, and even showed 
me a new figure in Cat's Cradle. He was in person very like what he was 
in later life, but paler, probably from the effects of his recent Cambridge 
reading. His hair was very thick and curly.' 

So congenial a companion proved doubly welcome when he 
was discovered to be possessed of musical talent, and happy 
evenings followed when the visitor played on his magic flute, 
accompanied by Sophia's younger sister — a circumstance calcu- 
lated to arouse certain pangs of jealousy on the part of the elder 
girl who, not being a pianist, was relegated to the role of listener. 
Miss Frend, however, as befitted her heritage, was possessed of 
remarkable character and keen intellect. Her education and 
upbringing had been wholly unconventional ; from her father 
she had learnt Hebrew, Greek and Latin, while she had developed 
a deep interest in antiquarian and theological problems. From 
her earliest childhood, too, she had mixed with the noted people 
of her day who all flocked to her father's house, forming a strange 
and heterogeneous gathering of varied professions and denomina- 
tions. Taylor, the Platonist, and Henry Crabb Robinson, there 
conversed with Sir Francis Burdett and Lord Brougham. Cole- 
ridge, Campbell, Browning, and Wordsworth were frequent 
visitors, as were both Mrs. Barbauld and Mary Somerville. 
George Dyer proved a never-failing source of amusement since, 
as young De Morgan soon pointed out, he ' was a man in whom 
a want of humour amounted to a positive endowment.' Lamb 
wrote poems in Sophia's album describing her as his 'lovely 
Frend ' ; and Blake, ' a man with a brown coat and uncommonly 
bright eyes,' Sophia first met when walking out with her father 
in the Strand when she was ten years old. 

' If there is a queer fish in the world,' remarked a conceited 
Dissenting Minister sarcastically one day before an admiring 
circle of his parishioners, ' he is certain to find his way to the 
house of William Frend.' 

'Excuse me, sir,' rejoined Sophia demurely, 'but I do not 
remember our having had the pleasure of seeing you there ! ' 

But amidst the assemblage of noted people of both sexes with 



ANCESTRY AND PARENTAGE 31 

whom she associated, the greatest friend of Sophia's girlhood was 
Lady Noel Byron, the widow of the poet, a woman whose rare 
personality aroused among those who knew her intimately some- 
thing akin to worship, while she remains for others a tragic 
figure in the glare of the publicity to which her husband's stormy 
genius exposed her. At that date there was a craze for phreno- 
logy, and Sophia, in company with Lady Byron, studied the new 
science with great seriousness. ' The question of inheritance 
which lies at the root of the whole,' she wrote many years after, 
' had not been entertained and the mysterious problem, the 
relation of brain to character, was very roughly handled in those 
days, and does not fare much better now.' 

A Mr. Holmes was then giving lectures on the subject in 
London, and Lady Byron and Sophia attended his classes ; 
whence arose an incident which Sophia relates in her own witty 
manner. 

' Mr. Holmes,' she writes, ' took casts and had a very good 
collection of these, as well as of the skulls of criminals, idiots, and 
other abnormalities. The collection was lodged in a house in 
Bedford Street, Bedford Square. Wlien I first saw them they 
were used by Mr. Holmes to illustrate his phrenological lectures. 
After one of these lectures, at which my father, my sisters and I 
were present, the lecturer pointed out to us some heads which he 
thought worth observation, as bearing evidence of the agreement 
of character with form. In going round the room, I descried 
a cast which I knew. It was that of our friend, Mr. De Morgan, 
and I had seen it before. . . . The head was on the top tier of a 
high stand among a choice company of idiots, hydrocephalic 
people, and the like. I asked the lecturer what was the special 
characteristic of that individual, and why he had that place. 

' " Ah," said Mr. Holmes, shaking his head and looking sorrowful 
as over a "bootless bene," " that is the head of a man who 
will never do anything. There is every kind of capacity in this 
head." He took down the cast and pointed to its proportions. 
" Wonderful endowments in science, in literature, in every way ; 
but they are all lost." 

'"Why so? " 

' " There is no power to make them active. The poor weak 
temperament cannot sustain any continued effort, so the fine 
organization is quite useless." 

' " What a lamentable case ! " 

' " Aye, indeed. If this individual had a temperament equal to 
his organization, he would have been a none-such." 

' I need not say,' concludes Sophia triumphantly, ' that the 
prediction was not fulfilled ! ' Nor did it alarm her, for in 1837, 
just ten years after she had first met him, she became the wife of 
the man for whom such a doleful future had been foretold. 



32 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

After a short tour in Normandy, the young couple settled 
down at 69 (afterwards 35) Gower Street ; and there the bride 
threw herself with avidity into the varied interests of a busy life. 
It is impossible here to touch on the numerous schem.es for the 
betterment of mankind which she originated or promoted during 
the years that followed. She worked hard and brought all the 
force of her fine intellect to bear upon methods of improving the 
condition of workhouses, asylums and prisons, in which latter 
movement she aided Elizabeth Fry. She initiated a Society for 
providing playgrounds for the children of the slums. She had 
also a large share in the formation of Bedford College in 1849 ; 
and, always an advocate for the higher education of women, she 
soon persuaded her husband to overcome his mascuhne prejudices 
on this subject and to champion the cause of Woman's Suffrage. 
He did so with a facetious protest. 

' We derive evidence of interesting facts from the study of 
etymology,' he wrote teasingly to her on one occasion. ' For 
instance, the superiority of the male over the female sex is clearly 
implied from the fact that when we overcome a difficulty we say 
we master it, but if we fail we say we miss it ! ' 

To the many noted acquaintances of Sophia's girlhood were 
now perforce added her husband's circle of friends, which com- 
prised most of the prominent scientists of the day. Still among 
the Professor's papers are delightful letters from Sir John Herschel, 
John Stuart Mill, Sir Frederick Pollock, Sir William Hamilton — 
who quarrelled and made it up again — and innumerable well- 
known men of that generation who sought his companionship 
and were his indefatigable correspondents. William De Morgan 
in after-life used to speak with amused recollection of ' the circle- 
squarers and perpetual-motionalists who used to buzz round my 
father like bluebottle flies ! ' The Professor's wit, his per- 
spicacity, the wide range of his sympathy, the complete absence 
of anything pedantic in mind or manner, drew men of every 
calibre to him with magnetic attraction. ' He was,' we are told, 
* a man of great simplicity and vivacity of character, and entirely 
free from self-interest. He had a love of puns and of all ingenious 
puzzles and paradoxes which make some of his books, especially 
his Budget of Paradoxes,'^ as amusing as they are learned ' ; and 
he had, above all, ' The excess of a lofty sense of honour.' 2 

Besides being a mathematician, Augustus De Morgan was an 
astronomer, and held the office of Secretary of the Royal Astrono- 
mical Society for two periods amounting to fourteen years. The 
Presidency was offered to him, but in declining it, he urged that 
it should be offered to Sir John Herschel, remarking in character- 
istic fashion : ' The President must be a man of brass, a micro- 

* Reprinted from the Athencsum after his death in 1872. 

• Dictionary of National Biography. 



ANCESTRY AND PARENTAGE 33 

meter-monger, a telescope-twiddler, a star-stringer, a planet- 
poker, and a nebula-nabber. ' 

From the outset of his career, the Professor exhibited a 
' thorough contempt for sham knowledge and low aims in study,' 
and in consequence he hated all competitive examinations. One 
day he was discovered scribbling down the following : — 

Question. What is knowledge ? 

Answer. A thing to be examined in. 

Question. ^Vhat is the instrument of knowledge ? 

Answer. A good grinding tutor. 

Question. Wliat is the end of knowledge ? 

Ansiver. A place in the Civil Service, the Army, the Navy, etc. (as 
the case may be). 

Question. What must those do who would show knowledge ? 

Answer. Get up subjects and write them out. 

Question. W'hat is getting up a subject ? 

Answer. Learning to write it out. 

Question. What is writing out a subject ? 

Answer. Showing that you have got it up. 
And so on, ad infinitum. 

His definition of an educated man was ' a man who knows 
something of everything and everything of something,' i.e. a 
man who is not absolutely ignorant upon any subject, but at the 
same time is entirely master of one subject. 

Of his ready sense of fun the following story is typical. At 
one time, when there was a great commotion about the frequency 
of body-snatching for purposes of dissection, some one in his 
presence read out a paragraph from the daily paper relating to it. 
Without any preparation. Professor De Morgan, looking up from 
his book, observed : — 

' Should a body want a body 
Anatomy to teach, 
Should a body snatch a body 
Need a body peach ? ' 

One characteristic, however, shared by both husband and 
wife from the early days of their marriage, deserves special 
comment because of its bearing upon future events. Mention 
has been made before of the avidity with which the Professor 
devoured all works of fiction ; and after his marriage he was 
anxious that his wife should share his enjoyment. ' He liked 
reading to me,' she relates, ' when he could get anything to please 
us both, and in this way I heard several of Dickens's novels from 
the beginning. They came out in monthly parts, and he would 
say, " We shall have a Pickwick (or whatever it might be) to- 
morrow " ; and on the first day of the publication we had read and 
commented on it.' 

In her husband's Biography, Mrs. De Morgan recounts how, 
three years after their marriage, a difference arose between 

c 



34 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

Augustus and herself respecting the exact character intended to be 
represented in one of the illustrations in Nicholas Nickleby. 
' The dispute ran so high that it could only be settled by an appeal 
to head-quarters. Accordingly Professor De Morgan sent a letter 
to the author from " a lady and gentleman who, being husband 
and wife, seldom agree about anything, though they are of one 
mind in admiration of the novel," and begged for a solution of the 
vexed question. Dickens entered with zest into the spirit of the 
inquiry, and in an amusing answer declared the husband's opinion 
to be the correct one ; "So," relates Sophia, " he was triumphant 
and I crestfallen ! " ' 

It was not, however, till many years later that Professor 
De Morgan first made acquaintance with the author of the books 
which had given him so much enjoyment. He met Dickens at 
Broadstairs, at the house of Mr. Knight, the publisher, and 
Sophia, who was not present at the interview, merely records 
with regrettable brevity : ' The meeting gave pleasure to both.' 
Fancy dwells more lingeringly on that happy encounter between 
the immortal novelist and the brilliant Professor who, httle as he 
then suspected it, was the father of a future novelist whom a later 
generation would compare to the man before him. 

There was another subject on which Augustus and his wife, 
if not precisely in accord in their conclusions, at least exhibited 
a common interest which undoubtedly influenced their children. 
Indeed, so prominent a part did it play in the home-life of the entire 
family that any attempt to reproduce the atmosphere of that home 
and ignore this element in it would be singularly incomplete. 

Augustus was accredited with being the first man of science 
in modem times who regarded and studied the phenomena of 
spiritualism, clairvoyance and telepathy with seriousness. 
His name is often quoted in this connexion by controversialists 
of to-day ; but while his wife was a whole-hearted convert to a 
belief in the significance of the phenomena she investigated, it is 
doubtful whether he did more than weigh the problem with the 
nicety of an analytical mind ; and the attitude adopted by him 
in regard to such analysis may be defined more explicitly since it 
was, in the main, that assumed in after-life by his son William. 

That certain psychical occurrences are difficult of explanation 
on any known materialistic ground the Professor accepted as 
evident ; but what inference to deduct therefrom, or what their 
bearing, if any, upon the question of survival and continuity of 
individuality after death, remained, he felt, undetermined. ' He 
was convinced of the reality of their occurrence,' states Mrs, De 
Morgan, ' though he had not satisfied himself as to their cause.' 
In brief, he was studying forces inexplicable, so far, to science, 
and he did not on that account deny their actuality ; but neither 
iid he lose sight of the boundless credulity of human nature, nor 



ANCESTRY AND PARENTAGE 35 

of the fact that the supernatural of to-day becomes, to-morrow, 
the superstition of yesterday. His views, however, are best 
summed up in his inimitable preface to a book on this subject 
published anonymously by his wife. From Matter to Spirit, by 
A.B. and CD. In this he weighs and analyses the intricacies of 
the problem with a subtlety at once humorous and profound, even 
if, ostensibly, with the bias of a Counsel for the Defence in his 
desire to please the true author of the book, whose work, though 
of interest, does not attain to the level of his prelude to it. 

We shall see later how William De Morgan affirmed that his 
father invariably balanced with care the scales between the two 
eventualities, possibility and probability. ' We thought,' observed 
the Professor in a controversy with Farady upon this subject, 
' that mature minds were rather inclined to believe that a know- 
ledge of the limits of possibility and impossibility was only the 
mirage which constantly recedes as we approach.' ' A true 
ghost story ! ' exclaimed a chemist once to him, indignantly, 
' Why, a ghost, sir, is a physical impossibility ! ' ' Exactly,' 
returned the Professor dryly, ' and for that very reason a psychical 
possibility ! ' In brief, to the wise, all things are possible and 
few things proven ; while the end of all knowledge is the know- 
ledge of our ignorance. 

One of many curious incidents, however, which, occurring 
under his own obsei"vation, made a deep impression on him, was 
as follows : At a seance one day in 1858, when Mrs. Hayden, a 
well-known American medium was officiating, he was told that 
the spirit of his father. Colonel De Morgan, was present. Anxious 
to put the identity of the ' spirit ' to a test which should be 
known to no one present but himself and the dead man, he 
suddenly recalled the phrase which had been used in reference 
to his father iort^ years before in the review previously referred 
to, viz., ' the friend of Christianity in India.' He therefore asked 
the supposed spirit whether he could remember a certain review 
published soon after Colonel De Morgan's death, and could give 
the initials of a title in five words, which had therein been 
applied to the deceased. 

The medium and the rest of the company present were seated 
at the table while the Professor sat apart where they could not 
see him, holding a pencil with which he pointed to each letter of 
the alphabet in turn. With the words of the required phrase 
m his mind, he fully expected a rap to be given by the table when 
he arrived at the letter F. But his pencil passed the crucial 
letter, and by the time he came to K he had decided that the test 
was a failure. Some one present, however, called out, ' You have 
passed it ; I heard a rap long ago.' He therefore began again ; 
and distinct raps came first at C and then at D. He was then 
more firmly convinced that the test had failed, and consoled 



36 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

himself humorously with the reflection that, after all, it was 
rather hard to expect a spirit to remember a passage in an obscure 
review forty years before ! Suddenly, however, it flashed across 
him that the raps had indicated correctly the letters which were the 
commencement of the sentence that contained the title. ' I see 
what you are at,' he remarked gravely, 'pray go on.' The raps 
then proceeded, and in turn again emphasized clearly the fol- 
lowing letters : ' CD. M.T.F.O. C.I.I/ These were the initial 
letters of the words forming the complete sentence, which ran 
' Colonel De Morgan, tJie friend of Christianity in India.' ' I was 
now satisfied,' he said, when referring to the incident afterwards, 
' that Something was reading thoughts known only to myself, 
and which could not have been detected by my method of point- 
ing to the alphabet, even supposing that could have been seen.' * 

Whether the Professor's owti brain could, by a species of 
telepathy, have conveyed his thoughts to those present on this 
occasion and unconsciously have suggested their action is a 
question which may be debated by the curious ; meanwhile it 
should be added that Sophia De Morgan, on her part, had been 
largely influenced in her attitude towards matters occult by a 
personal experience during her girlhood. An elderly friend and 
neighbour of hers having promised to visit her after his death, 
every night on going to rest, for more than a week after his 
demise, she was made conscious of his presence by various uncanny 
tokens ; till, in desperation, she changed her room, and fortunately 
the unenterprising ghost did not follow her to her new apartment. 

Other curious occurrences which took place in her own and 
her husband's family subsequently strengthened her convictions, 
and one incident carried especial weight. In middle age, Sophia 
was photographed holding the hand of a medium, and on the 
photograph being developed, behind her chair appeared a shadowy 
form which she recognized as that of a dead daughter who had 
been very dear to her. But the facility of faking an appearance 
of this sort on the part of a photographer, aided by the predis- 
position of a bereaved mind to fashion a likeness where none 
exists, are too well known to require emphasis, and her husband 
remained more interested in instances of the alleged appearance 
of the dead to the dying, many curious tales of which he collected 
and considered; always v/ith the recognition that a scientific 
explanation of the supposed phenomena might be forthcoming. 
' For augnt I know,' he wrote on one occasion when questioned 
about the exact lines of his investigation, ' a body may act where 
it is not, it may leave consequences behind it. An annihilated 

» Professor De Morgan refers to this incident in his preface to From 
Matter to Spirit, but, since that work was anonymous, he omits names and 
many particulars which are given here and serve to render the story more 
curious. 



ANCESTRY AND PARENTAGE 37 

star, which is seen by hght emitted during its existence, may be 
said, for ought we can tell, to act where it is not.' 

Nevertheless, such investigations as the husband and wife 
pursued added an interest to their lives, already so full of mental 
and physical activity. Although her studies in the occult 
modified Mrs. De Morgan's religious views so that these became 
more orthodox in creed, they left unimpaired her broadness of 
outlook ; while, so subtle was the Professor's exposition of this 
and other matters of controversy, that to this day he is quoted 
with happy confidence as a Rationalist by the Rationalists, as a 
Spiritualist by the Spiritualists, and respectively as a Unitarian 
or a free-thinker by those who like to acclaim him as akin to 
themselves in thought. Yet in truth he was none of these. 
Perhaps the nearest definition of his attitude towards religion is 
summed up in his own description of himself and his family as 
' Christians, unattached,' implying that while he accepted the 
tenets of Christianity, he declined to be relegated to any one 
particular denomination. 

Consistently, with the flight of time the prolonged devotion 
of his services to the London University remained singularly 
disinterested, as with his brilliant attainments and influential 
friends he could have readily secured a far more remunerative 
post at either of the older Universities. Still more, as the years 
passed and he became the father of seven children, the induce- 
ment to consider material advantages in preference to the quixotic 
support of an abstract principle might well have overpowered 
finer considerations. But all the profundities of Science were 
powerless to destroy the eternal Child in the heart of the Professor. 
The simplicity and the sincerity of his nature underwent no change. 
He remained the same unworldly, genial spirit, a veritable Sir 
Galahad in the cause of Truth, tilting wittily at the foibles and pre- 
judices of his fellow-creatures, and intolerant only of intolerance. 

But enough has been said to show the atmosphere in which 
William De Morgan first saw daylight — an atmosphere of merry 
wit and exquisite music ; of keen logic and piercing thought ; ol 
scientific research and — maybe — a leaning towards credulity ; ol 
an equally happy appreciation of hard fact and picturesque fiction. 

Nearly seventy years after the period with which we have 
been dealing, when this younger De Morgan had become famous 
as a novelist, a reviewer, writing of his early life, remarked : — 

' Wlien you consider the stimulating influences that were thus around 
him, forming his character and cultivating his tastes and his temperament 
throughout his most plastic and susceptible years, and calculate tlie unique 
inheritance that must have descended to him from such an ancestry, you 
begin to recognize that Mr. William De Morgan is no phenomenon, but a 
natural evolution. His Muse is Mnemosyne, goddess of Memory, mothei 
of all the Muses.' 



CHAPTER II 

A NURSERY JOURNAL 
1842 

DESPITE her many and varied interests during the early 
years of her married life Mrs. De Morgan's chief thought 
and attention were centred on her young family, whom she 
tended, educated and chastised with an over-conscientiousness 
which would astonish a modem parent. Still extant, in her fine 
pointed writing, is a nursery Journal which she kept with care 
at her first home in Gower Street at a date when only three 
of her family of seven had as yet come into existence ; and 
this record of daily peccadilloes, instructions, and corrections, 
conveys a singularly graphic picture of the little world hedged 
round by her mother-love, while it is illustrative of the tendency 
of her generation to attach undue significance to what would 
now be considered trivialities. 

For instance, on one occasion we find her sorely exercised 
in mind, and devoting many pages of analysis to the fact that 
her daughter Alice, aged 3I years, had made an unimportant 
statement which was not strictly accurate. The discovery 
that an imaginative, quick-witted baby had, obviously in all 
innocence, confused fact and fancy, distressed her grievously, 
and is treated by her with a gravity out of all proportion to 
the event. Nevertheless, both in liveliness and minuteness of 
detail, her writing resembles that of Maria Edgeworth, and 
suggests whence came the remarkable gift of realistic description 
developed by her son. 

At the date when this Journal was written, her family, as 
she says, consists of — 

Elizabeth Alice De Morgan, bom June 4, 1838. 

William Frend De Morgan, bom November 16, 1839. 

And George Campbell De Morgan, born October 16, 1841. 

Unfortunately little Alice, ' a sweet and clever, but very 
excitable child,' being then at an age when her inteHigence 
was naturally in advance of that of her baby brother, ' a dear, 
gentle child,' perforce comes in for a larger share of her mother's 
description, and no volume of a later date has survived to 

38 



! A NURSERY JOURNAL 39 

record the quaint, wise questionings of little William when first 
his active brain began to grapple with the mysteries of existence. 
Nevertheless Mrs. De Morgan presents us with a vivid picture 
of a smiling, lovable baby-boy, determined, and already full 
of individuality, but without the diablerie of his highly-strung 
little sister who, into her nursery days, seemed to pack the 
emotions and experiences of a life-time. Certain touches, 
however, amusingly depict the man into which that small babe 
was destined to grow — the spacious forehead — the portent 
of which his mother discusses with interest, so abnormal was 
it as almost to throw the rest of his face out of proportion ; 
the attractive drawl of his speech, which never left him in later 
years ; the retentive memory, of which, even then, his little 
brain showed remarkable signs ; and above all, the sunny, 
happy temperament, over which the tiny shadows in nursery- 
land, like the big shadows in after-life, fhtted like clouds above 
a placid pool. 

Still absorbed in her studies of phrenology, Mrs. De Morgan 
observed the formation of her children's heads with anxious 
attention. Under the date January, 1842, she writes : — 

' I find it impossible to keep a regular Journal, so this book begins on 
the beginning of the year with notices of my dear little children. If I 
were able to do it correctly, I should give the sizes and measurements of 
each head, but I feel able only to give a slight description of each. . . . 
William's head is better balanced than Alice's [and she appends a crude 
illustration to give the relative shape of each]. . . . Willie is now two 
years and two months. The largest organs in my darling boy's head 
are : — 

Benevolence 

Firmness 

Adhesiveness 

Conscientiousness 

Self-esteem 

Ideality 

The reasoning faculties 

Language 
The next in size at present axe :— 

Order 

Melody 

Caution 

Hope 

Love of approbation 

The drawing faculties 
In contradistinction : — 

Veneration is moderate 

Combativeness „ moderate 

Sensitiveness „ moderate. 

To those who knew William De Morgan there could not be 
a more accurate description of his characteristics seventy years 
later than that compiled by his mother from his phrenology 



40 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

in babyhood. Even the more negative qualities are curiously 
accurate in their limitation. Throughout his life his capacity 
for veneration was held in check by his propensity for analysis ; 
his comhativeness — save in some merry duel of wits — was nil ; 
and his sensitiveness — by which it is evident that Mrs. De Morgan 
meant what in her day was more often termed sensibility — 
a tendency to be unduly affected by the trivialities of existence 
—this too was counteracted by his singularly happy and equable 
temperament. 

Simple as are the incidents which Sophia De Morgan relates 
— as must needs be when their subject was but a babe of a couple 
of summers — they are not without significance to those inter- 
ested in the eternal truism that the Child is father of the Man. 
The first peculiarity which she remarks in the small human 
creature who had so recently learnt to speak is as follows : — 

' William has his sister's quick ear for rhythm. Like her he can repeat 
a great number of verses, particularly his favourites from Wordsworth 
which I have read to him, and he sometimes gives a poetical efEusion 
extempore. His first rhymes w'cre : — 

" Billy sees CIo-wti 
A-tumbling down ! " 
' This evening we were at the piano, and I sang them a little nursery 
song, the words of which are : — 

" Oh, Willy dear, do you love me 
As I love you, my sw^eet baby ? 
Oh, Willy dear, do you love me. 
Do you love me ? " 
' Without thinking much of the words I had gone on singing, and at 
the last question I heard very energetically from my little boy : " Yes, 
Billy will love Mama ! " Alice, who was on the other side, looked up 
and trying to screw \)cr face into composure said: " IMama, I can't 
help my face coniivg into tears. That seems such a sad song (here the 
tears appeared). Now I will try to get my face out of tears I " ' 

Later she again remarks : — 

' Willy's ear for rhythm is very quick. To-day Alice began, " IMama, 
I love you ! " 

' " Yes, my dear, I know you do — ' You love me and I love you.' " 
' W^iUy, seated upon the hearth-rug, solemnly remarked to lumself, — 
" When I am old and feeble too 
Will you love me as I love you 

Presumably this was a quotation from the little song which 
Mrs. De Morgan before mentioned, but its recital seems to 
indicate unusual powers of observation and memory in a baby 
such as the writer's small son was at this date. On another 
occasion his mother mentions : — 

' To-day I was drawing a house for jMice who asked me to put a bow- 
window in. When it was drawn, Willy observed : — 



A NURSERY JOURNAL 41 

'* A large bow-window in the room 
Nearly rested on the ground. 
With honey-suckle all in bloom 

Shedding its perfume all around." * 

Moreover, besides a retentive memory, Willie showed keen 
powers of observation at this early age of two. His mother 
relates : — 

He has taken a great fancy to the prints of Bewick's Birds. From 
four to five hours a day the little fellow looks through the book, and can 
now tell the name of almost every bird. Sometimes he names us all 
after the birds according to his estimate of our worth. 

' You're a Silky Starling, Mama ! ' 

' And what are you, Willie ? ' 

' Oh, I ' — humbly — ' will be a three-toed Woodpecker 

But despite his proclivity for poetry and Natural History, 
William — or, as he firmly designated himself. Bill — seems to 
have inherited something of the martial ardour of his ancestors : — 

'Willie is bent on being a " sozier " [soldier],' remarks his mother; 
' however, I do not fear that this fancy will last, unless there is a hollow 
behind his great forehead.' 

In contrast to her anxiety, before referred to, that her 
children as soon as they could lisp should realize the enormity 
of a lie, Mrs. De Morgan did not suppress more legitimate flights 
of imagination : — 

' When I walked out with the children one day,' she relates, ' I induced 
Willie to walk instead of being carried, by pretending that we were people 
travelling through a strange country in which we met all kinds of wild 
animals, cats were panthers, horses — lions, and dogs — tigers, etc. Janey 
[the nurse] told me that yesterday they were talking so loud about these 
beasts that a lady stopped in amazement and looked at them. Willie 
was in the middle of some history of a tiger running by the carriage when 
Alice exclaimed — " Look, Bill, here's four giants riding upon them and " 
— suddenly observing the lady who was looking surprised — " there's a 
giantess standing by ! " 

' They carry out the " make-believe " principle so far that they some- 
times come running out of my room into the nursery looking quite pale 
and frightened. When asked what is the matter it is sometimes a " peten " 
[pretence] wolf or a " peten " bear — occasionally a peten Guy Pox ; and 
once when Billy was looking very much alarmed, he answered our inquiries 
by saying, " I'm frightened of my shadow ! " ' 

Mrs. De Morgan soon found that her children's imagination 
led them to conclusions entirely unexpected by their prosaic 
elders. On January 14 she writes : — 

' Alice calls the feathery white clouds " the juice of the sky " because 
I had told her they were wet. She called the fringe I am wearing the 
" fibres " of my shawl. And she calls the seeds the " eggs of the flowers." 



42 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

This morning she asked me if the dried African flowers under the glass 
case were dead, and on my telling her they were, she asked, " Can flowers 
speak when they are alive ? " It is not surprising that she should have 
made this mistake, for the Cape flowers are everlasting and look like 
living flowers, therefore Allie might easily think all gathered flowers were 
dead.' 

The following day she writes : — 

• Alice asked me what my grandmama's name was. I told her Black- 
bur ne. 

' " Was she black because she went after the coals, and burn because 
she went after the fire ? " 
' " No ! " 

' " Where docs she live ? " 
' " She is not here now ; she went away before you were made ! " 

* " Ah — that was because I was so long in coming ! " ' 

Poor little Alice, however, between her own vivacious tem- 
perament and the over-conscientiousness of her mother, was 
in continual trouble. Small crimes, such as ' wiggling ' in 
the morning when her nurse brushed her hair, refusing to obey 
without knowing the precise reason why she was expected 
to do so, and a little innate spirit of perverseness brought her 
into sad disaster. Willie, on the contrary, with his almost 
unvarying sweet temper, remained naturally good : — 

' Dear Willie,' the mother relates, ' has once been carried to the nursery 
door for some small act of disobedience, but when he got so far he roared — 
" Bill won't 'tay ! Bill will be dood boy, Mamal" — he drawls out the 
last syllable in an odd manner — Mamaw 1 ' 

Only once she relates : — 

' Willie, suffering from his teeth, was a little peevish yesterday when 
they were playing together. I said, " You don't mind it, do you, Allie, 
dear ? " 

' " No," she said patronizingly. " It's his teeth, you know. He's 
irribubble ! " 

' " Willie is much better," [she adds, a few days later]. " He has just 
got a little gambroon dress and cape, trimmed with velvet and with silver 
buttons and buckle. This looks exceedingly nice and neat ; and Alice 
and he were greatly delighted with it. I think it gave her as much pleasure 
to go to the drawer and look at Willie's new dress as if she had one herself." ' 

Nevertheless William, even in his short experience of life, 
had already realized the relative values of good and evil. He 
had noticed that his sister, when naughty, was placed first 
in the corner of the nursery, and if that was not efficacious, 
she was then conducted to Mrs. De Morgan's dressing-room, 
where she was left till solitude and tears had engendered a 
penitential frame of mind and restored her moral equilibrium. 
On Wilham being reprimanded one day, therefore, and warned 
that he must ' be good,' it was observed that he first ran volun- 



A NURSERY JOURNAL 43 

tarily into a comer and then toddled on his own initiative into 
his mother's dressing-room, whence he appeared in due course 
dimpHng with smiles all over his chubby face. Inquiries 
elicited the explanation. He had seen that his sister went 
into these two places apparently to find the mysterious quality 
known as her " goodness," and on being told that he was defi- 
cient in that same quality, he naturally went to seek for it in 
the places where she had obviously found it. As an instance 
of Itith-healing this result may be recommended to the 
curious ! 

William, nevertheless, had certain clearly defined ideas 
on the subject of right and wrong. His mother mentions his 
vehement protest on seeing Punch and Judy for the first time. 
' Punch ought not to be allowed to beat Judy ! ' he kept exclaim- 
ing, terribly upset at such a perversion of justice ; and so dis- 
tressed was he that all enjoyment of the little farce was impossible 
to him. 

At this date Willie was too young for any religious instruc- 
tion, but the methods by which Mrs. De Morgan sought to 
convey to her children some conception of matters theological 
is illustrated by her conversations with Alice — a child of aston- 
ishing precocity and intelligence. 

At the age of three-and-a-half Alice was informed by her 
mother that there was a ' Good Father ' whom she had never 
seen but to whom she owed all that was agreeable in her little 
life ; and thenceforward she prattled glibly about ' my Good 
Father ' in contradistinction to ' my real Papa.' She was also 
told that it was possible to talk to this ' Good Father ' and 
thank Him for His goodness, although she must not to dis- 
concerted that no audible answer was received. 

Alice thereupon requested to be lifted upon the table where 
she could see the sky that she might talk more readily to the 
Being who lived beyond it. Her mother pointed out that this 
attitude was not suitable, and Alice reluctantly acquiesced in 
the decision ; but she was much attracted by the idea of address- 
ing this unseen Presence and used daily to think out a list of 
benefits for which politely to thank Him. 

In May, 1842, the little family party went down to a country 
house which was constantly lent to them by the friend of Mrs. 
De Morgan's childhood, Lady Byron. This was Fordhook, 
once the home of Henry Fielding, and whence, upon a bright 
June day in 1754, he had driven away on the vain search for 
health which ended in his untimely death. It was a medium- 
sized house 1 surrounded by a beautiful garden, which stood 
on the Uxbridge Road, a little beyond Acton, and nearly opposite 

1 The original house has been pulled down, and a modern one, bearing 
the same name, built on the site. 



44 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

the present Ealing Common Station. The happiness of the 
children at this transition to the country still glows afresh in 
the faded pages of the Journal, and still between its leaves is 
pressed a pallid flower gathered in that far-away spring in Lady 
Byron's garden. 

The day on which they started they had first the excitement 
of the festivities of May Day and its Jacks-in-the-Green, in 
reference to whom Willie announced his intention of being 
a sweep when he grew up, and Alice decided she would be the 
next best thing — a sweep's wife. Then came the drive to their 
new home with its kaleidoscopic revelation of varying interests ; 
next the wonderment of the arrival at the unknown house 
with the lovely pleasure grounds — the flowers, the ponies, the 
cows which, in turn, engaged their attention. Mrs. De Morgan 
relates : — 

' In their prayers to-night they had so much to thank for — sweeps — 
drive in the carriage — lovely garden — flowers — birds — " and those beautiful 
frogs of ivhich one jumped up so, and one stuck out its leg as if it were laugh- 
ing 1 " ' 

But Alice had a mind far too active and analytical to accept 
theology with the simple faith of an ordinary child. Her mother 
has jotted down various conversations on the subject which 
show unusual thoughtfulness in such a baby. On May 4 she 
writes : — 

' Allie was thinking over her old difficulty of how the clouds were 
made, and, pursuing her inquiries, she said : — 

' " Our Good Father made you and me and the clouds — but I want 
to know how He came Himself — was He born ? " 

' " No, love. He was not born like us — but I cannot tell 3'ou how He 
came." 

' Alice. " Well, if He made us, some one must have made Him. Was 
that Another Good Father ? and who made that Other ? " 

' M. " You see it is of no use for us to try to find out hoiv He came, 
because if we were to say another Good Father made Him, and another 
made that Other, still it would be a puzzle to find out how the first Good 
Father came." 

'A. " Yes— the Other of All T' 

' M. " Well then, you will believe me when I tell you that it is no 
use to ask — do you understand ? " 

'A. " Yes — but I should like to know ! " ' 

A few days later Mrs. De Morgan relates : — 

* On Alice saying her prayers this evening she said — " \Miat have I 
to say to-night ? — I don't know." 

' " You have always something to thank our Good Father for." 

' " What to-day ? " 

' " Not more than usual — unless you thank Him for the peaches." 

• " Oh, yes — Willy and I had a peach, and He made it." 
' " Yes, He made it and all the fruits that grow." 



A NURSERY JOURNAL 45 

'Alice. "All fruits and trees and men and women and children. 
Everything but Himself. How did He come ? — I cannot find out ! " 

' M. " No, you cannot — ^no one knows how He came." 

' Alice. " For, you see, He could not make Himself because if He 
made Himself He must have had arms and if they were made He was 
made before He made Himself, and that could not be, you know." 

' M. " No, love, we cannot understand it any better than you 
can." 

' Alice. " He must have been always, yet we are not always ; we are 
born. Is it not odd that He never should have begun ? " ' 

But if the problem of the First Cause perplexed the children, 
not so that of the Personification of Evil. There was a book 
at Lady Byron's which contained a portrait of the Devil, and 
Mrs, De Morgan relates : — 

' Alice had been very much smitten with this figure before, and had 
questioned Mrs. Stoker [Lady BjTon's housekeeper], who evaded the 
subject ; but Willy said to me to-night : — 

' " What's this, INIa — maw ? Is he a Monke}', or is he a dog ? " 

' " No — he's a pretence thing — a sort of Guy Fawkes. (It must be 
observed that all giants, monsters and make-believes go under the generic 
name of Guy Fawkes.) 

' Alice, who was sitting opposite, drinking her supper, looked up in- 
stantly, her eyes sparlding. " What is he, Mama ? Is he made of 
wood ? " — she came round to me very quick. 

' " Sometimes wooden — sometimes painted ; you know those picture 
figures are made in all kinds of ways." 

' " Is he real Guy Faux — has he any other name ? " 

' " Yes — he is not called ' Guy Faux.' " 

' "What is his name, then ? " said Will. 

• " Nick ! " 

' Here they both laughed excessively, W^illie observing — " You are 
funny, Mr. Nick ! " 

' Alice asked if he had no more names. She seemed to covet something 
more of the same kind. 

' " Yes," I said, " those who think it a better name call him 
Scratch ! " 

' " Nick and Scratch ! ! Oh, what fun ! Let's find another ! We 
must tell Janey ! " etc., etc. 

' Their first introduction to the Gentleman in question was productive 
of much mirth ! ' 

A few days after their arrival at Fordhook the children 
were given a toy wheelbarrow, which was a great source of 
excitement to them. Alice, as usual, having been in disgrace 
for some trifling disobedience, Willy was allowed to play with 
it first, but she showed no animosity at this decision, indeed 
the intense affection of the little brother and sister and the 
unspeakable distress of one if the other was punished affords 
some of the prettiest descriptions in the book. Nevertheless 
the new toy at one moment threatened to become a stumbling- 
block. 



46 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

May 8. 

' Willy quite determined to-day to wheel his wheelbarrow in at the 
library window. In vain I said, " Willie, you may take your barrow 
anywhere in the garden, but not in here." 

' " But I may." 

' " No, indeed, you may not. You must do as you are told. Take 
your barrow out of the window, my boy." 

' " No — I will be a man ; and I am taking my barrow in here." 

' " Then I must shut you and your wheelbarrow up. I think you had 
better do as I tell you." 

' " Nor 

' " Yes. Willie say — ' I will,' and do as he is told I " 

' " I will ! — I am taking it out now ! " 

' And out it went ! 

' A few minutes afterwards he returned. 

' " I am good now, Ma-maw. I am Mr. Walker [the gardener]." 

• " What is Mr. W^alker to you, WiUy ? " 
' " He is my 'squaintance ! " 

* " And what is Mrs. Stoker ? " 

' "My friend. I 'tuppose" — thoughtfully — " Lady Byron had better 
be my wife ! " 

' " Very well — I will tell her ! " responded Mrs. De Morgan imper- 
turbably.' 

It may be added that Lady Byron reciprocated the admira- 
tion which she had evoked ; and long years afterwards, when 
little Bill had grown to be an old man, one of his cherished 
possessions was still a fragment of a letter from this, his first 
love, to his mother containing an apt prophecy : ' I am certain 
your little boy will, in the years to come, be a remarkable man 
among men.' 

Occasionally Lady Byron drove down to Fordhook to visit 
her guests, bringing with her to their country isolation a supply 
of books and the latest news from London. ' I remember 
her vividly, ' wrote De Morgan half a century afterwards, ' an 
almost ethereally delicate, painfully serious, disconcertingly 
precise lady. The word stoical associates itself in my mind 
with Lady Noel Byron — not implying severity or grimness, 
but the tragedy of her life had left its mark upon her.' Never- 
theless Lady Byron was gifted with a sense of humour, and 
on one of these visits she related graphically to Mrs. De Morgan 
how Lady Lytton had been annoying her husband. Sir Bulwer 
Lytton, by sending letters to him at his club addressed to ' Sir 
Liar Lytton ! ' What, however, interested the younger members 
of the family more keenly was that on these excursions their 
hostess was usually accompanied by her grandson Ralph, after- 
wards second Earl of Lovelace, who was four months older 
than little Willie, and ever after remained his lifelong friend. 

Meanwhile the housekeeper in charge at Fordhook, Mrs. 
Stoker, was not regarded by Willie in such a favourable light 
as was his projected 'wife.' 



A NURSERY JOURNAL 47 

' A few days ago,' writes Mrs. De Morgan, ' Mrs. Stoker was in the 
dining-room when WilKe was eating his breakfast. 

' Wilhe cannot bear to have anyone present at meads who is not eating, 
90, to give her a poHte hint, he sat still and did not taste his food. Janey 
asked him why he did not eat, saying — " Are you not hungry, Willie ? " 

' " Ye-s." 

' " Then why do you not eat ? " 

' He only replied by gravely stirring about liis bread and milk, and 
when Janey begged him to eat it before it was cold, he looked at Mrs. 
Stoker saying — " You dine when Mama dines ! " She took the hint and 
left him. 

' Another day at breakfast, she, knowing his fancy, said — ' ' Wilhe, 
shall I stay with you ? " (He was alone, the others were not yet come to 
breakfast, and Mary [the second nurse] had left the room for a minute.) 

' " Ye-s," replied Willie, " you may stay till Mary comes back." 

' When Mary returned, Willie said pohtely to Mrs. Stoker, — 

' " Now Mary is come." 

Willy's superior good temper, however, was a source of 
pathetic envy to his restless, vivacious, little sister. 

Alice. ' Mama, I wish I was not so contrairy.' 

M. ' Well, love, you will teach yourself in time not to be so.* 

Alice. 'Willy is good always.' 

M. ' Not quite always — but on the whole he is a dear good little 
boy.' 

Alice. ' He was born good — I wonder why I wasn't born good too. 
It was wTong in our Good Father — He ought to have borned me good too, 
ought not He ? ' 

M. ' No — I do not think what He does is ever wrong. We cannot 
always tell why He does things different to what we wish, but we can 
know that if you had been born quite good, you would not have had the 
pleasure of conquering your naughtiness and of pleasing Him that way.* 

Alice. ' Then it was right in Him. He done it to give me a job /' 

Long years afterwards William De Morgan used to probe 
back with interest into his baby recollection of Fordhook. ' I 
wish every one who leaves a house would seal up in a bottle 
a short account of their experiences there and bury it in the 
foundations ! ' he said in this coimexion. ' What an enthrall- 
ing record it would make for those who come after ! ' 

The Professor was seldom able to accompany his family 
on their holidays, but his charming letters to his children have 
still survived, decorated profusely with attractive beasts, 
monsters and dragons — obviously the ancestors of the bogies 
with which his little son in the future was to adorn his famous 
pottery. 

But the Professor's bogies all served to inculcate the moral 
precept ' be good,' particularly in the case of vivacious little 
Alice, for as the years passed the precocity of her intelligence 
gave some anxiety to her parents, and in conversations with 
her father she displayed a tendency to such close metaphysical 



48 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

reasoning that he held it imperative to check the workings ol 
her too-eager brain. 

' My eldest little girl,' he wTote in 1847, ' gave alarming symptoms 
of being a prodigy, but I so effectually counteracted them that her mother 
began in her turn to be alarmed when she was between six and seven years 
old lest she should be backward in her learning. She is now between 
nine and ten, and frequentlj'^ puzzles me with words which I am to make 
out with the ivory letters which have been, and are, a source of amusement 
to us all. It is by these letters that they have all learnt — boys as well 
as girls — and the youngest now makes a small sentence with them from 
her book when she has a morning lesson — which is not every day. No 
spelling-book has been used ; and I abominate the system of daily tasks 
and getting so many words to spell by heart. As to a grammar, they 
shall never learn ©ne, nor be troubled with the false notions it contains.' 

This sentence hints at the system of education pursued 
by the Professor and his wife. The mental training of their 
children, in small matters as in great, was as unconventional 
as the moral training was rigid : they held that the minds of 
the young must be allowed full elasticity, their manners none. 
The result was a curious admixture of freedom of thought and 
outlook far in advance of the date at which they lived, com- 
bined with notions of conduct which even then were held to 
be unduly strict and old-fashioned. 

But little Alice, with her fearless questioning of Life's many 
mysteries, was destined all too early to learn the answer to 
the riddles which perplexed her. At the age of fifteen a chill 
sufficed to develop the family scourge — consumption ; and 
soon all that was left to recall her once-bright personality was 
the photograph before referred to with its hint of a shadowy 
Presence — which at least bespoke an abiding hope in her mother's 
heart. 

George Campbell, too, the three-months-old baby of the 
' Nursery Journal ' — ' with a head more wonderful than Wil- 
liam's ' — and who afterwards showed that he had inherited 
his father's mathematical powers — he likewise was fated to 
die in the dawn of a promising manhood, a victim to the 
same disease which wrought such dire havoc amongst his 
family. 

But William battled successfully with the constitutional 
delicacy which threatened him all his life. He, as his mother 
relates in that early Journal, grew ' tall and pale,' and by and 
by attained to man's estate to develop faculties which even 
her phrenology had never dreamed of. 

In the minds of children, however, trivialities take root 
abidingly, while the bigger events of existence fade into no- 
thingness ; and there were three pictures of his early days 
which always dwelt in tiie recollection of William De Morgan 



A NURSERY JOURNAL 49 

so that he recalled them as a septuagenarian. One was as 
follows : — 

He was still a tiny child — oh ! so tiny — though he could 
not measure the exact span of his little life, when one day he 
was playing and laughing in his father's garden. And suddenly, 
ip the middle of a romp, he planted his foot upon a wee sapling 
growing there, and looking down he saw that the little plant 
which had been so pretty a moment before lay trampled in 
the earth, bruised and snapped off an inch from the ground. 
And a lifetime afterwards he could recall how the scolding 
he received for his awkwardness was nothing to him compared 
with the anguish in his little heart at his unintentional cruelty, 
or how he went about afterwards feeling as though the brand 
of Cain were upon his brow when he thought of the beautiful 
tree which that sapling would have become but for his murder- 
ous tread. ' But,' he remarked as an old man, ' if the censorious 
spirit that I aroused could have foreseen the tree that was to 
grow from the forgotten residuum of the accident, the root 
that it left in the ground, it would not perhaps have passed 
such a sweeping judgment.' For he lived to see a magnificent 
giant spring from that little crushed sprig — ' A tree,' he would 
say with delighted satisfaction, ' which you can see to-day 
from the very end of the street ! ' 

Another recollection was as follows : He was taken by 
his mother to Mudie's Library to change some books. A little 
lad, just able to peer over the counter, he stood with his chin 
resting on the woodwork and gazed fascinated at the vista 
of enticing volumes reaching far away into a distance which 
he could not penetrate. Then he saw a tall gentleman step 
out from the back of the shop and hand his mother a three- 
volume novel. ' That,' whispered Mrs. De Morgan, as they 
walked away, ' was Mr. Mudie ! ' And sixty-six years after- 
wards the elderly gentleman into which that small boy had 
developed, as the guest of the evening at a large gathering of 
authors, recalled the thrill of delighted awe which those words 
had sent through him as a lad when he understood that he 
had seen the King of Librarians, the guardian of untold trea- 
sures ! 'How funny,' he added in conclusion, 'if Mr. Mudie 
could have looked forward and seen my future ! ' 

A third impression from his childhood followed him to the 
end of his days. ' Did you ever when a child have the map- 
fever ? ' he wrote ; ' I mean the passion for poring over maps, 
gloating over the lakes and mountains, building imaginary 
towns to suit their names, catching imaginary fish in the rivers, 
and chasing incredible wild beasts in the forests — such forests 
— my word ! It exists, this passion, and it rose to fever-point 
with me at ten or twelve years of age, in connexion with an 



50 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

enthralling series of maps of America, under the stimulus ol 
early experience of Fenimore Cooper and Catlin's North Ameri- 
can Indians.' Never, all through his life, could he hear a musical 
Indian name without the old glamour rushing back upon him ; 
never could he think of America without peering back wist- 
fully into that magic dreamland of his boyhood. 'It ceases 
for me to be a huge congeries of millionaires and Tammany 
and Trusts and nigger-ljmching and minute print' — a land where 
one takes one's telephone to bed with one and rings one's 
friends up every half-hour of the night. It becomes again the 
land Columbus found, good for youth's fetterless imagination 
to run riot in ' : a land of eternal adventure, of inexhaustible 
exploration, of hairbreadth escapes from which one will always 
emerge triumphantly — for otherwise would not the story come 
to an end ? And that is unthinkable with all life before one ! 
For those ancient maps over which the little lad had pored 
depicted a roadless wild tilled with tribes of delightful aborigines 
long since improved out of existence — either dead as the Past 
to which they belonged, or transformed into gentlemen of intelli- 
gence studying at Universities. . . . 'And now,' De Morgan 
concluded in his retrospect, 'sixty years have passed, and the 
Indian tribes are a name, and all the dream and the romance 
have vanished, and folk WTite letters to me — even to me — 
from the very places where " The Savage drank his enemies' 
blood," and their letters are all about . . . my books ! 
Curious 1 * 



CHAPTER III 

THE OLD MAN'S YOUTH 

1842-1872 

WRITING in 1914, William De Morgan summed up the 
chief landmarks of his early years as follows : — ■ 

' I was born in Gower Street (No. 69) and resided there — if an infant 
resides — till my fourth birthday, November 16, 1843. I can recollect it ! 
In the spring or summer of 1844, my father moved to No. 7 Camden 
Street (afterwards Miss Buss's School, or College). I went to the Univer- 
sity College School at ten years old, I believe in 1848 — probably at the 
opening of the session. I was there till sixteen, when I went into the 
College. In that year my father left Camden Street for 41 Charlcot 
Villas, Adelaide Road (afterwards 91 Adelaide Road). I then began Art 
at Cary's in Streatham Street, Bloomsbury. I remained at College till 
nineteen, and was then admitted to the Academy Schools in 1859.' 

Necessarily throughout these years the choice of a place of 
residence by his parents was always dictated by its accessibility 
to the London University, this being essential ahke to the Professor 
and his children. Meanwhile to the latter certain recollections 
became indissolubly connected with each of their successive 
homes. 

In Gower Street the mother of Charles Dickens, in days of 
dire poverty, had striven to start a boarding-school ; and almost 
daily little William used to pass the house which became dimly 
associated in his mind with the name of the novelist which he 
was always hearing — the man who throughout England had 
recently become a household god. In Camden Street, where were 
subsequently spent sixteen of the most impressionable years of 
his life, the atmosphere of his surroundings may be traced in 
his own work half a century afterwards. It is not difficult to 
Imagine that the many poor and thickly tenanted slums in the 
vicinity of the better houses there made a deep impression on 
the boy's imagination as he took a short cut home daily through 
these purlieus and caught snatches of the queer talk of their 
teeming inhabitants ; while exactly opposite his father's house 
stood an odd little Nonconformist chapel, which has only 
recently been pulled down to make way for a County Council 

51 



52 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

school, and which was surely once presided over by Joey 
Vance's pet aversion — Mr. Capstick of Hell-fire fame ? It was 
in Camden Street that William's three younger sisters were 
born, and there bright little Alice breathed her last. And i1 
was there also that his sister Chrissy when a small girl, being 
of more orthodox persuasion than the rest of the family, and 
perturbed because William had not been christened, solemnly 
baptized him one day out of a slop-basin ! 

It was in connexion with this home too that he always used 
to remark one curious coincidence later in life. For always 
before some great crisis, and invariably before a death in his 
family, he had a vivid dream of this Camden Street house 
There was nothing particularly remarkable about the dream, 
apart from its sequel. It was just a resuscitation of ordinary, 
homely events in that bygone life, realistic in its sheer triviality ; 
but it was so inevitably followed by disaster, usually bereavement, 
that he came first to remark and then to dread its recurrence. 

Adelaide Road, when his parents removed to it, was almost 
like a country home, for it was surrounded by fields. At the 
date of this transition, William had attended the College School 
for six years, and he now first began to take the lessons in drawing 
to which he refers. To the present generation it may be neces- 
sary to explain that Francis Stephen Cary, to whose old school 
in Bloomsbury he went, was from 1842 for thirty- two years a 
well-known Art teacher, and was himself the younger son of a 
vicar celebrated for his writings, and particularly for his trans- 
lation of Dante's hiferno, published in 1805. No sooner did 
William begin to study under this tuition, than he began to 
dream dreams about his future in life ; and in the last book 
which he gave to the world, many passages of which are auto- 
biographical, he thus refers to his misguided choice of a profession, 
when a boy of fifteen. 

' Another landmark which had painful consequences for me in after 
life was my discovery that I had a genius for the Fine Arts. This per- 
nicious idea would never have crossed my mind if a school-feUow of mine 
named Jacox had not had another idea equally pernicious, that he had 
a genius for Satire. Tliis idea fructified in Room K, under circumstances 
as follows.' 

And after describing how he had made a crude sketch of the 
Farnese Hercules, and how Jacox, looking over his shoulder, 
remarked cynically, " You know hov/ to draw, and no mistake ! " 
he says : — 

' I perceive now that it is too late — near sixty years too late ! — that 
he was, according to his lights, satirical. He had justification, however, 
in the widely spread belief that an exaggerated over-statement of the 
contrary is an effective form of ridicule. What he wished to convey was 
that I did 7ioi know how to draw, and probably never should. I doubt 



THE OLD MAN'S YOUTH 53 

if I was able at that time to conceive myself incapable of anything, and 
I accepted his encomium seriously. ... If he had only put his tongue 
ever so gently in his cheek ! ' 

In this simple fashion the die was cast. On his way home 
the boy in the story — as probably did the boy in real life — 
bought ' cartridge paper and a threepenny BB pencil, and a 
piece of india-rubber of the period/ which he promptly ' put 
to thaw ' in his breeches pocket ; and directly he got indoors 
he spread out his cartridge paper proudly and drew upon it 
Prometheus attacked by a vulture whose \^dngs spread all across 
the paper. He had the sense to be dissatisfied with this effort, 
and tore it up ; but an officious sister rescued the fragments 
from the dustbin where they had been cast, and piecing them 
together, subsequently claimed enthusiastically for the mutilated 
work of Art the admiration of all to whom she showed it. Thus, 
in the story, was accomplished the gradual self-deception of the 
youthful aspirant to genius, and his final undoing, since his 
talent was conspicuous only by its absence. 

How far all this is to be taken as literally true is immaterial ; 
what is of interest is that the writer, reviewing a far-distant 
Past, saw how the Destiny of a life invariably hinges on some 
unimportant incident scarcely noticed at the time of its happen- 
ing. From that point omvards he describes faithfully and 
relentlessly the failure of his own early attempts at painting ; 
the misleading applause which at first egged him on to a false 
estimate of his powers ; the judicial platitudes of the great 
artist who was pressed for an opinion respecting his incapacity ; 
even the social side of the question as it appeared in his day is 
dealt with in a vein of deft and delicate sarcasm. Above all, 
the inanity which directs the public taste in the fashion of 
Art — so-called — and the type of artists — so-called — who prey 
upon that inanity, alike come in for a measure of his laughing 
scorn. 

There is a dehghtful description of the Professor disguised 
as the perplexed father of his hero striving to arrive at some 
just estimate in regard to the situation created by his son's 
sudden predilection for High Art. Stow, an Art auctioneer, 
and partner to a large firm of Art dealers, is appealed to for 
his views on the drawings which the juvenile artist has pro- 
duced : — 

Keep to the point," [urged the father] : "if one of your boys 
thought he could do Art, would you let him ? " 

'"Let him be an Artist? — Why — certainly! if he showed ability. 
If people bought his pictures, why shouldn't he make his living that way ? " 

That brings us to the point. Do j'ou see any reason, from these 
drawings, to suppose that anyone will ever want to buy my boy's pic- 
tures ? " 



54 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

' " That can be settled by trying the experiment. Teach him to paint 
pictures, and see if anyone buys them. He can be taught in throe or 
four years if he's tractable. I fancy — I tell you I don't know — that 
there's notliing in these drawings to show that he won't be able to 
paint pictures. Rather t'other way, I should say. When they are 
painted, we shall soon see if anyone wants them." 

' " I am completely puzzled," said my father. And indeed he looked 
so. " Do you mean to say, Scritchey," he continued after a moment, 
" that there is no such thing as an absolutely good or bad picture — that 
it is entirely a matter of fashion ? " 

' " Selling is entirely a matter of fashion. Good pictures are pictures 
that sell. Bad pictures are pictures that don't. There may be people 
that know good pictures from bad, but all I can say is they keep outside 
auction-rooms . ' ' 

' " Then Master Jackey may still have a chance, however badly he 
paints ? " 

' " Rather. You come to the Mart some day when a big sale's on and 
see if what I say isn't true." 

' " But I shall not know good from bad myself." 

" ' Oh, dear — yes, you will !, Everj'body does ! " 

' " Doesn't that contradict what you said before ? " 

' " Of course it does, flatly. But what I said before didn't mean that 
nobody knew good from bad, and that nobody could prove an^^thing 
either way. Everybody knows, but then unless he praises what other 
people think rubbish, nobody will credit him with a higher form of know- 
ledge than his own, and that's the sort of fame bounce grows fat upon. 
Believe me, dear Strap, that there is a factor in Art of more importance 
than correct drawing or dignified composition or striking chiaroscuro or 
vigorous impasto, and that is . . ." Mr Stowe dropped his voice to a 
whisper on his last word " humbug ! " ' 

In regard to the social side of the question at that date, a 
fictitious stepmother is his mouthpiece : — 

' I have sometimes thought very leniently of my stepmother for her 
share in hurrying me on to destruction. Because although she conceded 
to me abstract ability of a high order — and we must remember that it was 
as much as one's life is worth to attempt to stem High Art — so long as no 
question was raised of its adoption as a profession, yet as soon as a murmur 
of Destiny was reported to the effect that I was " going to be " an artist, 
she took up her parable on the score of Caste, and denounced Art the 
profession, however high on the slopes of Parnassus, as socially low, and 
altogether unsuited for the son of a gentleman. For, strange as it seems 
now to tell it, there were still, in the 'fifties, persons in Society who grudged 
admission to its sacred precinct to every Art but Literature. The elite — ■ 
so said a gospel that had survived from the last age but one — might be 
amateurs, like Count d'Orsay, but not professionals. And this gospel 
was preached with the greatest vigour by persons on Society's outskirts, 
who indeed are apt to take up the cudgels in defence of its citadel even 
wloile the garrison is contemplating all sorts of concessions to the enemy.' 

None the less, in spite of the absurdity of some of the barriers 
which were placed in the way of his boyish ambition, the sound 
common sense of his father put a decisive, if temporary, veto 
upon its fulfilment. 

' My father,' he relates, ' put his foot do^vn firmly on every attempt 



THE OLD MAN'S YOUTH 55 

to bring the fine Arts into the arena of serious discussion as a profession 
for his son, until I had finished my course at school, and attended lectures 
for at least a year at the College. Even with that delay I should still be 
short of nineteen — scarcely old enough to make the choice of a profession 
compulsory.' 

It must have been about the date of this early initiation 
into Art, that WiHiam, presumably a boy of sixteen, went with 
one of his fellow students from Gary's to spend a brief holiday 
at Lynton. Whaite, this new friend, was evidently the original 
of 'Opkins in The Old Man's Youth ; and presumably the 
following fragment of a letter which describes their visit escaped 
the destruction which overtook the rest of it solely out of respect 
for the illustration of Mrs. Bale, the landlady, with which it 
is adorned. 

William De Morgan to his Mother. 

' Waterloo House, 

• Lynton, 

' [Undated.] 
* My dear Mother, — 

' This person is Mrs. Bale, our landlady, who 
may be a very excellent person, but who doesn't 
look the character. This place (Waterloo House) 
is as I told you a regular do, and will be left by 
us to-morrow. We have found a very good place 
in Lynmouth close by the waterside, where our 
expenses will be, I should think, very close indeed 
to what I put them at. 

' It has rained incessantly throughout to- 
day, which has made it impossible to begin any 
real work, or indeed almost any work at all, for 
I could neither go out of doors to work, nor find anyone out of doors to 
bring in to work from. However, stretching canvasses and sheets of 
paper, and trying to draw from the window, and drawing Uttle humbugs 
out of my own head, has (or have) occupied me all day. This won't 
happen when I have a connexion among the populace, and am able to 
get at the folks to paint them. By the way, we shall have at our next 
lodgings a very decent sitting-room big enough to paint in. 

' Whaite is a very pleasant man to be with. He is uncommonly 
Manchester, and spills the human H about the floor copiously. Likewise 
when he begins to laugh he never stops. And that is all about him. 

' All except very fine days I shall be indoors working. Lynton would 
be quite the worst place in the world for you. I think the climate would 
be bad and the climb-it worse. Lynton is just above Lynmouth — that 
is four hundred feet up — and the ascent is quite as steep as the most 
active person would wish it to be. It is quite as bad as an}i;hing at Pen- 
maenmawr, but rather close and muggy and shut in by trees, and I think 
you had better stick to Wales. . . . 

' I passed in tiie coach through Lord Lovelace's estate.' 
(The rest of the letter is lost.) 

From the University School, William passed into University 
College, where he remained for three years, and where a con- 




56 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

temporary relates ' he distinguished himself as a scholar, though 
the bent of his mind was always towards science.' It is still 
recollected how, during the lectures which took place, both Wil- 
liam and his father were invariably to be seen drawing busily, 
sometimes, it appeared, unconsciously, so that caricatures, 
jests, or hobgoblins of weird appearance, 'little humbugs,' were 
always to be found scrawled upon every scrap of paper that had 
been within their reach. Another taste young De Morgan 
shared with his father was that, although he showed no love 
for mathematics, he always maintained that ' Euclid, Book I, is 
the most entrancing novel in literature.' His own views, how- 
ever, about his life at the University are of peculiar interest. 

' I think my father's imagination was misled by the word College. 
He could not dissociate it from his old University life, with its intoxicating 
traditions of ancient learning, its freedom of sacred precincts where every 
stone brings back its memories of bj-gone scholars ; its great silent libraries 
whose peace alone is stimulus enough to make an otherwise bookless 
man read out the day and part reluctantly in the end with the quarto or 
folio he never would have looked at elsewhere. He had never known how 
much of his own love of the classics was due to the associations of the spot 
where they had reached his soul, and he fancied that liis son too might be 
bitten with the love of Literature ; or, it may be, of the practice of think- 
ing — mathematical and scientific thinking — by the surroundings of a 
College. But, honestly as I believe that there was not in the world, in 
my time, a sounder curriculum of learning than the one he offered me, it 
had one defect. There was nothing in the places of study, in their ante- 
cedents and surroundings, to catch and hold the imagination of a crude 
boy, who, behind his many faults — which I do not think my words conceal 
— had one prominent inipulse of the mind, which was ready to grasp good 
or evil, truth or falsehood, according to the garb it came in. My year of 
College life — in no sense Collegiate life — placed the banquet of learning 
before me ungarnished and colourless, and my father wondered why the 
dislies that had tempted his intellectual palate in the library of the gardens 
of Peterhouse should be tasteless to his son's in Gower Street. Surely a 
College is a College, wherever chance has placed it. He attached no 
weight whatever to University residence, as against home and daily 
attendance. Of what disadvantage was it to a studious youth to be 
shut out of his College after hours ? Would any amount of gating make 
study acceptable to an unstudious one ? — No — it was manifestly my 
aversion to letters, developed as soon as application to them became 
optional ; for that was a condition precedent of College manhood, no 
longer schoolboy-hood.' 

Thus William, finding no appeal to his imagination in the 
prosaic surroundings of tlie Gower Street University, turned 
more determinedly to the vision of Art which attracted and 
teased him. The desire for creation, the craving for self-expres- 
sion which is a complement of all intelligent Youth, was in him 
a living force which fought to find an outlet and, at first, sped 
into the wrong channel. There is a typical letter from his father 
to him belonging to this juncture, on which pencilled comments 
are added in the recipient's handwriting. 




The Three Sons of Professor De Morgan 
From left to right — Edward, William and George 



THE OLD MAN'S YOUTH 57 

Professor De Morgan to William De Morgan. 

' 7 Camden Street, N.W., 

' AugiiSu 24, 1858. 
' Dear Willy, — 

' Now that 5^ou have fairly left College, it is time to ask yourself 
whether you have really made up your mind as to your profession — and 
if so, whether j-ou have chosen wisel3^ I have never interfered, because 
I cared little what you thought at seventeen and eighteen. 

' Do you really think that you are so likely to adhere to the choice 
you think you have made as to make it worth while to spend more time 
upon it ? [In pencil, in William's handwriting, Yes.'] 

' Have you considered your chance of success with any other eyes but 
your own ? Would it not be worth while to take the opinion of some 
persons who have no partiality towards you as to your chances. 

' Have you considered other things as to how you should like tliem ? 

' Are you fully aware of the lottery character of the profession of an 
artist ? 

' Do you know that it is a life subject to very keen mortifications. [In 
William's writing — Blow that /] 

' Do you know that the preparation for it is very hard labour ? That 
you must work many hours a day for years and years ? 

[In William's writing — The same may be said of any profession in which 
one may become an honourable and independent individual.'] 

' Think this over for a fortnight and give me an answer. If, after 
perfect deliberation, you make up your mind to go on, well anql good. 
But j'ou cannot easily give too much thought to what I have put before 
you. 

' Give me no answer for a fortnight at least. But even if you wait 
till you come here give it me in writing. 

' Your affectionate Father, 

' A. De Morgan.' 
[' Endorsed in William's writing — Received IVcdnesday, August 25, '58.'] 

The answer to this letter has not survived, but what its 
gist must have been is apparent. ' My father's feeble opposi- 
tion to my wishes had to disappear,' William relates, ' though 
I do not believe he was ever convinced ; he was far too sensible 
for that ! I fancy he consoled himself with the reflection that 
I was still so young that a year or so spent in demonstrating 
my incompetence for Art could be well spared.' None the 
less it is curious to find that the Professor with his shrewd 
insight appears to have realized one course in which his son's 
immature genius might be successfully directed. ' My father,' 
wrote William nearly half a century afterwards, ' never gave 
me but one strong piece of advice about my profession, and 
I disregarded it at the dictates of a boyish vanity. He told 
me to read hard, especially the classics, and I should one day 
write well. But I must needs "be an artist." ' 

So, in his twentieth year, William entered the Academy 
Schools, which he describes as follows : — 

' Another forty years and the memory of the old Academy Schools 
will linger only in a few old. old noddles for a while — a short while — and 



58 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

will flicker out at the very last in the brain of some centenarian. Bur- 
lington House was still a decade ahead in my day ; and the Schools, out 
of the Exhibition time, were in the Exhibition Rooms. The way in was 
under the right hand entry, and there was a door on each side. On the 
left, to the Schools ; on the right, to the Library. I am writing it down 
to recall it in myself. I think it must have been in the autumn of fifty- 
seven [sic] that I entered that door on the left. Can I blame it, that 
when I did so lasciavo ogni speranza — left behind me, that is, every hope 
of becoming a useful member of society ? Not every hope of coming out 
again, for I came out to lunch.' 

With graphic touch he describes his disillusionment : — 

' As for those I saw drawing — probates, I suppose, as they had passed 
through successfully — I was strongly impressed with the persistency 
with which they gazed on their own work, glancing occasionally at its 
original for comparison. Now and then, rarely, as a. fly occasionally 
touches the surface of a still pool, the point of a crayon or the bustle of a 
stump touched the surface of a drawing. The serene contemplation of 
achievement, which filled the gaps between the touches, set thought on 
the alert to determine when the drawings were actually executed ; a task 
before which thought reeled and staggered speechless. A fair percentage 
of these matured students seemed morally degenerate — more reprobates 
than probates — passing their time in the exchange of repartees, the 
comparison of the beauty of actresses, or reminiscences of theatrical 
tit-bits.* 

Nowhere did the young Art student see the earnest striving 
after Attainment which his inexperience had depicted. On the 
contrary, — 

* My recollection is well supplied with dissolute and vicious units who 
made up for sheer incay)acity, or strong disposition to leave off work at 
the point at which difficulty begins, by audacious attitudinizing and 
wholesale quackery. The wonder of it to me has been that such men 
have been so often taken at their own valuation, and have been worked 
up by dealerdom, and written up by the press, until any attempt to 
accelerate the natural gravitation of their " work " towards Oblivion 
would only cause a recrudescence of their spurious fame, and defeat its 
own object. 

' I was not qualified for a mountebank by nature, and should never 
have scored a success on those lines. So I never became a Real Artist.' 

In life if we are strong we mould Circumstance ; if we are 
weak it moulds us. So William De Morgan, taking the measure 
of the charlatans in his profession, found his own truth intensi- 
fied. So, too, with unflinching courage, he accepted his own 
limitations and rebounded from the recognition braced to novel 
effort. It must here be remarked as curious that, so long as 
he attempted to paint on conventional hnes, so long was his 
work redeemed only from mediocrity by a certain quaintness 
of expression ; but even to the untrained eye, it was anatomi- 
cally uncertain, stiff in outline, and somewhat hard in colour. 
No sooner, however, as we shall see later, did he give free rein 



THE OLD MAN'S YOUTH 59 

to his imagination than the beauty of line developed and his 
fine draughtsmanship became apparent, as did the mingled 
originality, humour and facile execution which enhanced the 
decorative quality of his work. 

None the less, the scientific trend of his mind made itself 
felt even during this stereotyped artistic training. It v/as 
impossible for him to travel far along any beaten track. He 
was for ever trying fresh experiments with pigments, thinking 
out processes which might more effectually achieve some result 
at which he aimed. Still more, his love of mechanical invention 
crossed and warred with the visionary element in his nature. 
His thoughts were constantly caught in a mesh of intricate 
problems connected with some discovery of practical utility. 
' I know of nothing like invention to make life palatable ! ' 
long years afterwards he represented his hero Joseph Vance 
saying. Even so, the surprising versatility of his powers did 
not, as is usual with a nature which is many-sided, out of its 
very diffuseness, involve a corresponding superficiality. In 
his early career, as to the last day of his life, his mastery of 
technical knowledge on any subject which he tackled was 
remarkable. There was only one matter on which, to the end 
of his days, he preserved the ignorance and the simplicity of 
a child — and that was the subject of finance. Money — the 
coining and the keeping of it — did not enter into his scheme 
of life, save only in so far as its absence crippled his mental 
output. 

At this date, as one of a family of six, the son and grand- 
son of men who had eschewed all worldly advantage, William 
De Morgan had little money and small prospect of more coming 
to him ; moreover he had obstinately chosen a profession which 
was not likely to prove remunerative. Yet he faced life with 
a happy irresponsibility, his lips full of quips and his mind full 
of problems, while his whole being radiated a cheery Bohemian- 
ism all his own. ' He was, however, never talkative, except 
to his intimates,' related Sir William Richmond ; and in these 
early days he became known to his friends by the nickname 
of ' the Mouse,' partly on account of his being so quiet, partly 
because of the abnormal development of his forehead in con- 
trast with the smallness of his features. Good-looking, taU 
and slight — an almost boyish slenderness never left him through- 
out his life — his face presented something of an enigma to the 
curious, with its bright, alert expression, its crowning mass 
of chestnut hair, and the remarkable brow — full of a promise 
which the years were to fulfil. He would sit silent, apparently 
mdifferent to a conversation going on around him, but all the 
^hile absorbing impressions into the store-house of a memory 
?vhich was to be rich in result half a lifetime afterwards. At 



6o WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

some unexpected juncture, however, he would abruptly launch 
into the conversation an absurd comment, the humour of which 
it is impossible to reproduce on paper, since so much of its 
quaintncss lay in the manner of its utterance — the attractive, 
high-pitched drawl which his mother had remarked in baby- 
hood, and which to all who knew him was so much a part of 
his individuality that they never cease to hear it, instinct with 
life, still speaking from his books. 

Even when a man has drifted from youth to age, the essential 
characteristics of his physiognomy survive the more ephemeral 
changes wrought by Time, Thus a description of William 
De Morgan's appearance as a septuagenarian, written by Mr. 
Bram Stoker, is not inappropriate to quote here. Writing in 
1908 Mr. Stoker says : — 

' William Frend De ISIorgan has a most interesting physical personality. 
Let me describe him : He is in height about six feet, though this now seems 
lessened somewhat by his tale of years. He is of slight build with shoulders 
square. His head is well balanced on a fairly long neck ; sign of high 
type. It is well shaped ; very wide and full behind the ears, with bold 
forehead wide between the ridges which phrenologists call the " bumps 
of imagination." These manifestations are sufficiently marked as to be 
well noteworthy. The top of the forehead rises in a steep ridge of bone, 
manifestly of considerable strength, for it once resisted, without evil effect 
collaterally, a blow from the swing-back of a heavy door which stripped 
away the skin. The frontal sinuses are not strongly marked. The 
eyebrows are fairly thick. The nose is a delicate aquiline as to its ridge, 
with the tip slightly pointed and drooping, and with long, though not 
wide, nostrils. The chin is somewhat pointed, and the jaws are rather 
narrow than wide. The eyes are blue-grey and of good size. The ears are 
small and delicate. The mouth is medium ; straight and not long, with 
lips rather thin than thick. 

' His hand is characteristic ; the fine, dexterous, sensitive hand of an 
artist skilled in plastic work. The palm is wide. The fingers are long 
and fine ; very little webbed at the joining the palm. They are pointed 
at the tips, but — strange to say with regard to an art- worker — hardly 
spatulated at all. The whole of the inner side of the hand is w-rinlded 
and lined in a remarkable way. He has a strange story to tell of a predic- 
tion based on the lines of his hand made long ago. , . .' 

This story is as follows : — 

About the age of twenty, he went to a soothsayer to have 
his fortune told. The man, looking at his palm, appeared aston- 
ished, and exclaimed that the hand was a most remarkable 
one. ' Fame will come to you,' said the fortune-teller, ' but 
it will not be till late in life. Only after middle-age is over will 
success be yours, and then it will come from a totally unexpected 
quarter. Your name will be known, and will be a household 
word in remote places of the earth v/here your foot will never 
tread. This will be the case in Africa, Australia, and above 
all in America.' 



THE OLD MAN'S YOUTH 6i 

De Morgan, however, little impressed with this prediction, 
still adhered to the career which he had mapped out for him- 
self ; and it was while he was thus struggling through a phase 
of misplaced effort in regard to Art that he mxade most of what 
he termed later ' the great, fortunate friendships of my life.' 
One of the earliest of these was with Mr. Henry Holiday, the 
well-known artist, sculptor, and designer in stained glass, who, 
now an octogenarian, has some happy memories of the De Morgan 
family over half a century ago. Writing of the year 1863, Mr. 
Holiday says : — 

' We became intimate this spring, and I was often at Adelaide Road 
where his family lived. His father. Professor De Morgan, well known 
for liis writings on spiritualism, the three sons, William, George and Edward, 
and the daughters Annie, Chrissie and Mary, formed an attractive and 
interesting household, not the less so to me that the}' were most of them 
musical. Professor De Morgan plaj'cd Pleyel's Sonatas for piano and 
flute with his daughter Annie. Edward played the violin and was in 
great request with amateur orchestras ; and most of them sang. . . . 

' My parents and I arranged to go to Wales in the summer of that 
year, and either by accident or design the De Morgans went too, to Bettws-y- 
Coed. The two families were near each other for some weeks, and had a 
lot of part singing. . . . William De Morgan, now so eminent as a writer, 
was then a working artist, and I felt much encouraged by liis good opinion 
of my early efforts in decorative design. 

' It was at Beddgelert that the idea of extending the range of the 
binocular occurred to him. ... It was not till twenty-seven years later 
when De Morgan and his \\dfe came to stay with my wife and myself in our 
cottage at East Preston on the Sussex Coast, that he reminded me of the 
theory. I at once went to Worthing and got good glasses, constructed a 
frame and set them up accurately, and the effect was wonderful. Distant 
trees, that appeared to the unassisted eyes to be in the same place, when 
seen in this instrument started apart in their relative distances in a sur- 
prising manner. . . .' 

He proceeds to point out how invaluable such a discovery 
was for Naval and Military purposes ; and adds the sequel 
which might have been anticipated — that it was adopted by 
the German Government, not the British ! 

Staying also at Bettws-y-Coed in 1863 was Simeon Solomon, 
the artist, and a Mr. Davidson with his daughters, both of 
whom were musical, and one of whom played beautifully. One 
evening she played the Waldstein Sonata exquisitely while 
the rest of the party listened entranced. Never afterwards 
in life could De Morgan, who was passionately fond of music, 
hear this Sonata without being deeply moved. ' It is the best 
argument for immortality that I know ! ' he once said. None 
the less, at the conclusion of Miss Davidson's rendering of it, 
Mr. Holiday, turning to him, remarked enthusiastically, ' How 
brilliantly she plays ! ' ' Yes ! ' rejoined De Morgan with 
a gasp of satisfaction, ' it was so brilliant it made me — wink I ' 



62 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

Chrissy, William's sister, Mr. Holiday relates, was very 
clever and witty, and, he considers, had a larger share of her 
father's humour and her brother's genius than the rest of the 
family. On one occasion when Mr. Holiday was visiting the 
De Morgans, the company present, four men and four girls, 
found themselves seated in a complete circle. The conversa- 
tion, in consequence, turned in jest on the question of squaring 
the circle. Chrissy suddenly announced that she could solve 
it. All listened with breathless interest for the solution. ' You 

take a soft circle ' she began, and no further explanation 

was necessary ! 

Mary De Morgan, the youngest of the family, was likewise 
extremely lively and full of fun. She would toss her short, 
wa\ing hair out of her eyes in the wild breeze upon the Welsh 
mountains and complain, ' My gay hairs will bring me down 
in sorrow to the grave ! ' Nevertheless, Mr. Holiday then 
considered her too dowTiright and determined. She was talk- 
ing, one day, of the lack of common sense exhibited by people 
with artistic tendencies, and the subject being admittedly 
capable of a personal application, he remonstrated warmly : — 

' My dear Mary,' he said, ' I am afraid you are very pre- 
judiced ! ' 

' Well — all artists are fools,' was the blunt rejoinder. ' Look 
at yourself and Solomon ! ' 

But if Mr. Solomon fared badly under the criticism of Mary, 
he never forgot, and used to retail with zest, the fashion of 
his first meeting with William. William was introduced to 
him at a party, and at once in his high-pitched, leisurely drawl, 
remarked tentatively — ' I thought, it was you, you know, because 
I knew you by your appearance.' 

Another young friend, kno\vn to Henry Holiday, Mr. Amherst 
Tyssen, was also staying in the neighbourhood, and his diary 
mentions his first meeting with some of the De Morgan family, 
when they played at 'the game of cartoons.' 'William,' he 
says, ' was the name of the son who visited us . . . Mary is a 
precocious little minx ; Chrissy is an athlete ... all are good- 
looking . . . William evidently has long given up the practice 
of hair-cutting.' 

Suljsequently the three young men joined forces in many ex- 
peditions and a welcome addition to the party was the Rector 
of Bcddgelert, who somewhat inappropriately bore the name 
of Priestley, while rejoicing ' in the manners of a rollicking 
schoolboy.' ' He was,' relates Mr. Tyssen, ' an odd sort of 
fellow for a clergyman, good-hearted and outspoken. On 
some mention of matters ecclesiastical in his presence one day, 
he exclaimed with unaffected naivete, ' Oh — something cleri- 
cal ? — I Iiate that sort of thing ! ' Mr. Tyssen adds how, one 



THE OLD MAN'S YOUTH 63 

day, De Morgan, Holiday and himself were escorted up Snow- 
don by the boyish Rector. ' He took us through most boggy 
ground. It was all thick mist ; and when on the summit I 
wrote a calculation to show that the view from Snowdon extended 
seventy-four miles over the sea, he said promptly, ' What a 
lie — you can't see six yards ! ' Long years afterwards some 
recollection of Priestley must surely have materialized in De 
Morgan's imagination into the figure of Athelstan Taylor, the 
athletic, attractive rector in It Never Can Happen Again ; 
but in those early days he contented himself with sending to 
Tyssen, anent their new acquaintance, ' a set of humorous Latin 
rhyming lines with comments on them. In these he introduced 
Dominus Sacerdotalis, of whom one commentator said talis 
qualis est and the Welsh Editor added the words immo vero.' 

One day an ear-splitting sound of firing annoyed all staying 
at the little Inn, and they learnt that a wedding was taking 
place at which Priestley was officiating. At a quarter to eight 
in the morning the happy pair drove off to Portmadoc to get 
married, when tv/enty-one guns were fired ; on their return 
at noon — the bridal couple and guests seated together in one 
huge car driven by a postilion— again there was a loud volley 
of guns ; and yet again a more continuous fusilade took place 
when they sat down to dinner, and when most of the villagers, 
joining in the festivity, got uproariously drunk. The ' guns ' 
employed were primitive but extremely ingenious. Vertical 
holes were bored in the rocks above the inn, and connected 
by cracks, so that a marksman hitting one of these fired the 
lot in a series of deafening explosions which, combined with 
the echo rolling up the valley, created a prolonged uproar as 
of pandemonium let loose. ' I wish to Goodness they wouldn't 
get married so loud ! ' observed William plaintively. 

Visitors who have stayed some time in a place are apt to 
consider themselves in the light of ' old residents ' compared 
with fresh arrivals whose advent seems to be that of mere 
' tourists. ' The merry party at Bettws-y-Coed coined a word 
for any objectionable intruder of this type, who was forthwith 
contemptuously termed a Bawp. One day, walking along 
the road, they saw a man approaching and began speculating 
whether he would turn out to be a fresh arrival, whereupon 
the problem was propounded how it was possible to decide 
if a new-comer were a Bawp or not. William gave the matter 
his consideration. ' All men,' he pronounced judicially, ' are 
Bawps unless they can prove themselves to be the contrary ! ' 

The Professor, it may be added, did not come to Bettws-y- 
Coed — even as a Bawp. He frankly disliked the country, so 
that he had been known to describe the mild rurality of Black- 
heath as ' a miserable scene of desolation.' William did not 



64 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

share this idiosj^ncrasy. Even with his rooted disHke to any 
conventional form of society, he was naturally of a sociable 
disposition ; but he delighted in beautiful scenery, and was 
insatiable in his desire to see the sunrise from the summit of 
a Welsh mountain. Mr. Tysscn records how on several occasions 
young De Morgan and Holiday sat up till one in the morning 
in order to start on a climb with this object in view, from which 
they returned in time for breakfast and a dip in the lake. On 
one occasion, however, when he accompanied them, they set 
off at nine at night, walked along the coast by the light of a 
rising m.oon, ate their supper at midnight in a churchyard, 
' to enjoy a sensation of creeps,' and finally encamped far up 
the hill-side to sleep romantically among the heather till dawn. 
Unfortunately for their intention, they awoke a few hours 
later in a deluge of pouring rain, and as the grey daylight came, 
it revealed only a mass of impenetrable clouds drifting all 
around, so that nothing was left to them but to make their 
way home lashed by the wind and the wet, chilled to the bone, 
drenched but undaunted. 

These expeditions, however, were occasionally not v/ithout 
danger, owing to the screes which they utilized in their descent, 
and which are a peculiarity of the district. The action of the 
weather constantly breaking off small pieces from the rocks 
on the mountains, these fall and form sloping heaps of loose 
stones against the steep acclivities. ' If you mount on the 
top of a pile of screes,' relates Mr. Tyssen, ' and descend it by 
digging your feet violently into the mass, you loosen a great 
body of the stones at each step, and carry them down with 
you. It is something like skating and requires the exercise 
of skill. Of course the stones near the top of the pile are the 
loosest ; as you descend they become more compact and at 
the foot they are solid and fixed by the vegetation which has 
sprung up among them. The heap of screes on the south side 
of Alynydd Mavv^r was the biggest we had seen anywhere, and 
one day we ascended the mountain on purpose to have the 
fun of grinding down the heap.' 

The result was somewhat disastrous, for although they 
had a lovely view from the top, where they amused themselves 
by building a small cairn to commemorate their visit, in descend- 
ing, De Morgan hurt his foot, while Henry Holiday, relates Mr. 
Tyssen, ' got too much steam up, and losing his balance rolled 
over and over amongst the rocks for more than fifty feet before 
it was possible for him to stop,' — fearfully bruised and shaken, 
his head, hands, and legs cut, and pouring blood. 

But in those light-hearted days, misadventures were soon 
forgotten, particularly by De Morgan with his eager, versatile 
temperament. ' The entries in my diary,' remarks Mr. Tyssen, 



THE OLD MAN'S YOUTH 65 

' show that in 1863 William De Morgan was strong, active and 
enterprising. He was also well-informed, clever and humorous. 
This came out particularly when we played the games he and 
his family were fond of, such as drawing pictures and writing 
stories on those drawn by the others, also making a list of words 
and finding rhymes to these, thus fashioning sets of verses. It 
was not always easy to find a rhyming connexion with a given 
word ; but William solved the difficulty by introducing a nega- 
tive. He discovered that it was always possible to find a rhym- 
ing word about something which the given subject did 7iot do 
or was not ! One evening we had a competition in finding as 
many rhymes as possible to'^the word " piano " and William 
won by inventing a number of ridiculous combinations of words 
which supplied the necessary rhyme. At this date, too, he 
and Henry Holiday on wet days were jointly painting a picture 
which represented the body of the Lady of Shalott floating 
down the river to Camelot and exciting the wonder of spectators 
on the bank. Each did a small portion of the picture, as the 
spirit moved him, and then left it to his collaborator to continue 
as the latter saw fit. The result was curious and rather beauti- 
ful.' 

They sometimes played at finding anagrams, and William 
found one for his father, Augustus De Morgan, which was singu- 
larly appropriate : — 

' Great Gun, do us a sum ! ' 

This was, however, surpassed by one confided to him by his 
friend Mr. Graves, later the author of Father O'Flynn. The 
father of Mr, Graves, who was Bishop of Limerick, and his 
uncle John Graves, who was Professor of Jurisprudence at 
University College, were great friends of Professor De Morgan, 
and on one of the rare occasions when the latter left town the 
Bishop and the two Professors were walking by the seaside, 
when John Graves, who prided himself on his anagrams, saw 
an invitation to an open-air service which contained the tempt- 
ing announcement of a special ' Seaside Hymn.' At once 
the letters wickedly rearranged themselves into an anagram 
to which he involuntarily gave expression — ' Damn his eyes ! ' 
—'He thought,' related Mr. Graves to William, 'that after 
this he had better give up anagrammatizing, as the habit was 
becoming morbid ! ' 

A sample of the game of 'Cartoons,* as De Morgan played 
it, has survived. At this date he and Holiday had already 
made friends with a young artist, Edward (Burne) Jones, who 
added greatly to the hilarity of their circle, and who entered 
with zest into this pastime of drawing pictures to which a story 



66 



WILLIAM DE MORGAN 



was to be supplied by the victim on whom these were foisted. 
Upon one occasion Jones drew a set of fantastic drawings to 
show what he termed ' economy for pubhshers ' — that is how 
one set of pictures could be utiHzed to illustrate two entirely 
dii'ferent tales — and De Morgan and Holiday were deputed 
each to write a separate interpretation of the designs without 
seeing what the other had written. Holiday thereupon wrote 
an extremely ingenious paper purporting to be drawn up by 
Austen Henry Layard for General Sabine, of the Royal Society, 
Assyria, giving an account of the further exploration of ' the 
great Palace of Kouyunjik ' and of the unique bas-reliefs and 
sculptures found therein : while De Morgan, perhaps recalling 
his recent training under the son of the great translator of 
Dante, described the drawings as representing a new version 
of the Divina Commedia. 

As the earhest specimen of De Morgan's fiction now existing, 
these verses are of interest ; but it must be borne in mind that 
they were no serious composition, only a carelessly written 
effusion in a boyish game ; while no emphasis is necessary to 
point the baffling nature of the drawings which they interpret, 
or the topical character of the interpretation in days when 
the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood represented the newest phase 
of Art, when Literature was still sentimental, and when Fashion 
decreed that crinolines were de rigueur, so that each woman, if 
not a ' dowdy ' or a ' blue,' was confined in a ' stout cage.* 



' The following are the fragments of Dante's Inferno which 
Michael Angela illustrated. Gary's translation.' 




' . . . Then my Guide : — 

" Lo, monsters twain [No. i] beside the Infernal gate 
\Mio circle rotary in hideous dance ! 
Father are they and daughter, Death and Sin, 
Whom Satan passed in Milton. I forget 
Its whereabouts i' the poem ; but its there 1 '* 



THE OLD MAN'S YOUTH 

'Then in the brazen lock the key revolved 
G^urteous. Then I — " Sweet father, what is this Shape ? 
And to me he — " Cerberus " . . . . 
Athwart the path it stood, a form to awe 
The stoutest [No. 2a], who had fallen on the path » 
On it beholding. . , . 

• ••••••{ 

' Now had we left the noonday sunset's ray [No. 3] 
Sinister, all a-pause on Cancer's Zone 
Betwixt Astrea and the Scorpion's sign 
In juxtaposition. There with digit raised 
Virgil — " Behold ! " I looked and saw a throng 
Of Ghosts tumultuous [No. 4], females rushing on 
Headlong towards a dungeon. " Who are these. 
Sweet pedagogue ? " said I ; and he to me — 



67 



[No. 2] 




* " The Hafoines of Romance, who expiate. 
Here in this circle, mawkishness above." 
Then we approached, and those sad Shades cried out — 
" Alas ! Alas ! that ever we were bores I " 
Then I — " Among ye are there any here 
Of Florence, or of any other town 

In Italy, or out of it ? " — " Yea we ! " and one — " Yea, I 
Was Agatha's Husband's Wife, an awful bore, 
A woeful and abominable bore." 
" And I was ' Mrs. Halifax, lady,' cried another. 
Then a third and smaller one — 
" And I was Muriel in the self -same novel 
As she who last addressed thee." Then they all 
With one accord, set up a mournful song — 
" Go tell i\Iiss ^lulock ^ to ha' done, and make 
Night hideous with her bores no more ! " " And I," 
One other cried, " was Esther Summerson 
In Dickens's Bleak House, a conscious minx 
A mock-meek bore, a moralizing bore. 
O should' st thou. Mortal, e'er to earth return. 
Implore my Author that he ne'er again 
Write sentiment ! " She vanished and we passed 
Onward . . . . ' 

* Footncis by De Morgan. Michael Angelo appears to have misunder- 
stood this passage, having drawn ' the stoutest ' on the path distorted 
with horror. It is a fine specimen of that foreshortening for which he is 
remarkable. 

' I^Iiss D. M. Mulock (Mrs. Craik), author of John Halifax, Gentkmav. 
and n wzry large number of novels. 



68 



WILLIAM DE MORGAN 



' The citroncd pudding and the osseous beef ' seen in the 
comer, No. 5, give scope for a dissertation upon Love contrasted 
with the action of ' the insignificant Rat,' who tries — 

' To use Free Will according to Free Won't,' 
and the poem continues— 




' Then in the circle twenty-fifth we moved 
And I my Guide bespake — " O Teacher, say 
What yonder form betokens ? " [No. 6] for beyond 
(One from a multitude) a fiend-rid goose 
With wing outspread and agonizing cry 
Swept o'er the Vast. Then Virgil thus to me— 
" O Son, thou seest here the fruit of Sin 
Most deadly, Criticism called of Art ! 
For yonder Goose, a critic erst on Earth 
Now pays the price of many an Article 
At which an earthly goose might well have sneered.'* 
Then we approached, and to the bird I spake : — 
" Wast thou of Florence ? " and he " No ! " replied ; 
" Of Marylebone was I. I was an Ass 
On Earth, and therefore am a Goose ; 
I wrote of what I did not understand 
For many penny periodicals 

And others. Yet, O mortal (shoulds't thou e'er 
Return to Marylebone) implore my friends 
Not to be horrid humbugs ! " . . . 




(7) 




THE OLD MAN'S YOUTH 

* " In yonder dark abysm," [No. 7] said my guide 
" Are punished Blues and Dowdies, they who wore 
No crinoline on Earth, and thence looked limp. 
Or trod with clumsy foot on toe of male. 
The former that I mentioned went cram full 
Of History and the Tongues to festive scenes. 
And scientific recreations talked 
Each to her partner in the dance." And lo 1 



69 




Even then a bonnet coal-scuttle I saw 

On female, tough and durable, who lied 

A ruthless fiend [No. 8]. He with a bristled broom 

Swept her, she clinging to the wall with cries 

And lamentations, towards a frightful cage 

(From which, 'twould seem, she had escaped) and drove 

Her in, where she with wailing sank to earth. 

While he the deviUsh engine locked and barred. 

Then we approached. That Demon fell and foul 

With broom upraised, in act to strike, surveyed 

My Teacher, with forbidding mien. But he 

With mild rebuke suggested other course. 

" Forbear," he said, " for beings twain can play 

The game thy mood suggesteth." So he fled. 

And the woman from beneath the cage, 

" O mortal, for that such thou art I see, 

I was on Earth a Dowdy and a Blue 

And eke strong-minded. Wherefore I bewail 

Hampered by deadly Crinoline, my Sins. 

O pity, though thou blame ! And O take note 

(Alas ! Alas ! that ever I took notes) 

Of my forlornness ! Not a book have I 

T' inform the stronger-minded ! No — not a tome ^" 

Hast thou a Cyclopaedia ? Perchance 

Thou hast, and thou woulds't lend it." . , . ' 



The next illustration, No, 9, represents the Hell of those : — 

' Who are wont to take no sugar in their teas, 
O error prime and impious ' 

(De Morgan himself being wont to indulge in a plentiful 



70 



WILLIAM DE MORGAN 




supply.) Therein a friend is seen bearing away one of the offenders 
in a wheelbarrow to immerse him in a pool of molasses ; while 
No. 10, a man on a gallows, is said to depict an enemy of the 
pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood : — 

' " Say, who was't thou on Earth," I said to him 
Who swung in midmost air with woeful plaint. 
" I was a hanger ! " straight he answered me. 
" I who once hanged, now hang for evermore. 
I hanged my friends upon a line. All P.R.B.'s 
I skied, and now myself am skied I " " Explain," said I 
And he — " I was of the Academy 
Where Plato taught. In thy Square Trafalgar 
An Academician I 

The Boshite hanged, and skied the P.R.B. 
Or altogether fearless to become 
In danger of the Council, turned him out." 
Then at the gallows base a bitter fiend 
With scofE and scorn cried out — " Go hang thyself ! 
Thou rogue thou." ' 

In a similar vein many other pictures are explained ; and mean- 
while Holiday, with well-feigned erudition, discussed them from 
the standpoint of an excavator and antiquarian. In No. i he 
saw an interesting ancient bas-relief of Bacchus and Ariadne. In 
the so-called ' Cerberus ' he saw ' the fall of Phaeton, and one of 
the horses galloping off in the direction of Vulcan's forge, leaving 
the rash youth on the plain.' In the long train of ladies in 
crinolines and coal-scuttle bonnets, instead of Miss Mulock's 
sentimental hetoines, he saw ' the visitors returning home from 
Belshazzar's Feast,' the remains of the viands being seen upon 
the right ; while in the lady being attacked by the broom, he saw 
' the heroine of an Assyrian fable being swept from the Globe.' 
Finally, upon the mysterious cage in the corner he discoursed 
yet more learnedly, having deciphered the ancient characters 
relating to it which, in phonetic spelling, revealed that it was a 
mysterious, pre-historic article known as a kri-nu-hn. 

De Morgan's early acquaintance with Edward Burne- Jones 



THE OLD MAN'S YOUTH 71 

soon developed into a closer comradeship. The young artist, 
about six years older than himself, had in 1863 been married 
little more than three years to Miss Georgina Macdonald, one of 
the five daughters of a Wesleyan Minister, who were all remark- 
able for their extraordinary talent and beauty. ' Our friendship 
with William De Morgan,' relates Lady Burne- Jones, in the Life 
of her husband, ' began in Great Russell Street ' [where they lived 
from 1862 to 1865], ' when his rare wit attracted us before we 
knew his other loveable qualities.' The laughter-provoking 
spirit of Burne- Jones, his bubbling humour, his happy philosophy 
of life at this date, and, above all, the warm-hearted spontaneity 
of his affection in dark days and bright, found a ready echo in 
De Morgan's heart, apart from the lure of his genius. 

Other friendships likewise centre round this date. Dante 
Gabriel Rossetti with his vivid personality. Ford Madox-Brown 
with his daring innovations in art, Charles Faulkner, Cormell 
Price, Woolner — a clique of gifted, ardent spirits, with Spencer- 
Stanhope, who was later to be so closely associated with De 
Morgan's life, and William Morris, ' Top ' of the fiery genius, with 
his beautiful wife, ' Janey.' 

In Great Russell Street, with kindred companions, De Morgan 
spent delightful Bohemian evenings to which ever after he would 
regretfully revert — evenings when the unsophisticated little 
Yorkshire maid used to add to the hilarity by coming in with the 
naive inquiry, ' 'as any of you gentlemen seen the key of the 
beer-barrel ? ' Among a coterie, however, who lived to make 
the world more beautiful, who had created for themselves an 
atmosphere of mediaevalism till they affected it in mannerisms 
and speech, Rossetti, as a relief from the too rarefied atmo- 
sphere, introduced the habit of talking Cockney. The contrast 
between their ideals and their lingo subsequently furnished much 
food for merriment ; and De Morgan, with his curious drawl, 
became an adept at this new accomplishment which was to have 
a result on his after-career that he little anticipated. 

Many of Burne- Jones's letters to him, purposely illiterate in 
diction and spelling, illustrate this phase. One, undated, runs 
as follows : — 

a 
* My de A r de Morgan, 

mem 

do you rem „ ber a frame i likt at your house it wus a frame from 

c 

florrence it wus ainice one and i likt it may Mr. VaAani make me one lik 

it may he call at your house and I may add your good ladies' house on 

Monday nex about 12 or so I will try to come round on Sunday ?iternoon 

to adentify the frame i hope u are quite well this seseonable winter i am 

J ded so is most people i hope to get good news from you and all your 

famly with wishes for a happy new year when it comes i am 

' Your afEectionate 

' Ned.» 



72 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

Later, he added more explicit instructions in his normal 
manner : — 

' If Vacani calls on Monday, and very kind of you it is of you to permit 
his approach to your secluded retreat — if, I say, when I was interrupted, 
he comes on Monday the frame I mean is a pretty one I can't remember 
but have a powerful recollection of — it used to be in a corner of your 
drawingroom, on the left of the fire place if you are warming your front, 
and on the riglit if you are warming your back — and it was a tall thing, 
and as I say I shall never forget it though I can't a bit remember more 
about it and I am 

' Your affect 

' Ned.' 

Most of these letters conclude with a clever caricature of the 
writer in lieu of signature. All contain sentences which hnger in 




the memory. ' I wish I could see you,' Burne- Jones writes 
despairingly, after a prolonged absence from home, ' time is 
slipping by horribly. I suppose we shall meet as Bogies — and if 
you promise not to frighten me I will promise not to frighten 
you ! No hiding behind doors mind, I can't stand it, my nerves, 
never of the best, are not likely to be better then ! ' On another 
occasion, after a good grumble at an enforced absence from home, 
he adds : ' Now I am in a calmer frame — as the picture observed 
when the newspapers said it wanted more repose. But O come 
and let us be joyful on Saturday evening.' 

Once, noticing a fresh canvas in Burne- Jones's studio, De 
Morgan inquired if it was intended for a new picture. ' Yes,' 
replied Burne- Jones, quoting the conventional newspaper 






■^U.^ 






'Mr- 









^ 




.-'? ■' 


/— 


'-W*!/' i 


^'l^ 


A.< 


rr 


_^' 


,4 " ^ 


"^ 


/ 














''"- '^ ( 


>[lai,.->i \ 


■ ^u 


r- 
v^^' 


'. L 


r:c- 


"'-}■'•-. 


.) ^y 


/- 


^VfVi/ i 


/?t^i 






i'^. 


■M. 




1 

1 



Caricature by Edward Burne-Jones 

Sketched for William De Morgan. 
" Drawn by E. B. J. to show me he couhl have drawn like Caravaggio if he had tried." — WM. De M. 



THE OLD MAN'S YOUTH 73 

criticism of pre-Raphaelite work — ' I am going to cover that 
canvas with flagrant violations of perspective and drawing, in 
crude inharmonious colour.' Later in the evening he said to De 
Morgan : ' You know that was all gammon I was talking about 
perspective and drawing— I onl}" do things badly because I don't 
know how to do them well — I do want to do them v*'ell.' Another 
time he remarked : ' Why should people attack artists as they 
do ? — Artists mean no harm — at least I don't. I only want to 
make a beautiful thing, that will remain beautiful after I am 
a Bogey, and give people pleasure when they look at it.' 

One Sunday afternoon De Morgan brought his mother to look 
at the pictures Burne- Jones was painting. As we have already 
seen, Sophia De Morgan took life somewhat seriously, and at 
this date she had been devoting much time to the study of 
Symbolism, in which she was fast becoming an expert. No 
sooner did she see the work of the young artist, than she began 
reading into it a meaning a-tune to her favourite hobby. ' What 
I do appreciate in your painting,' she said, at last, judicially, 
turning to him after studying it for some time v/ith great solemnity, 
' is its depth of meaning — its profound symbolism ! How well 
I read your intention here — and here — and here ' — enumerating 
rapidly several mystical interpretations of the subjects before 
her. 

' My dear fellow, ' said Burne- Jones to De Morgan with amaze- 
ment when she was gone, ' I am so delighted she saw that in it — 
/ never knew it was there ! ' 

Many a laugh in the years to follow did De Morgan have over 
other interpretations of his friend's work. For instance, on one 
occasion, Burne- Jones's beautiful ' Golden Stair ' appeared under 
the wrong number in the catalogue as ' A Stampede of Wild 
Bulls.' On another, a very affected model mentioned that she 
was sitting to ' Mr. Jones, one of the rising artists of the day, for 
a beautiful religious subject,' i.e., the female figure in a picture 
of ' Christ and the Woman of Samaria,' and De Morgan— unable 
to recall any work bearing this title on which Burne- Jones was 
then engaged, and suspecting a practical joke — made inquiries 
and found that the deluded lady was posing for the female in 
' King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid.' 

When Burne- Jones left the house in Kensington Square, where 
he lived after leaving Great Russell Street, and moved to the 
Grange, West Kensington, he took De Morgan round the garden 
of his new home in order to expatiate on the beauty of the vegeta- 
tion of which he had become the proud possessor. ' We are so 
excited,' he said, pointing to some bushes, ' to see whether these 
turn out to be peaches or blackberries ! ' 

One of the first letters sent by him to De Morgan from this 
new address refers to a picture which he had just been painting 



74 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

while on a visit to Spencer-Stanhope near Cobham, ' where, 
relates his wife, ' our host's cheery companionship indoors did 
him as much good as the fresh country air outside.' Apparently 
De Morgan had recently been suffering from one of those passing 
fits of depression to which youth and an artistic temperament 
are inevitably prone, and the recognition distressed Bume- 
Jones. 

Edward Burne-Jones to William De Morgan, 

' The Grange, 

' North End Road, 

' FULHAM, S.W. 
' West Grandmother. 
' Dear DM., — 

' You can't see the Annunciation, its away being photingrafted — but 
come to-morrow eveng — Mr. Morris is here, and there will be Mr. Rooke, 
R.A., on his way to Venice — come. 

' I thought you looked not quite happy — it has bothered me — I wanted 
you to come on Sunday to be cheered, — I don't like you to look like that. 
I want you fat and merry, full of rude and coarse jesting, I don't like you 
to be miserable. If I could help you in this ere . . . life you ought to 
tell me — ought to — for I'm old enough, aye, and ugly enough to be any- 
body's father, and I'd give you money (up to a pound say) or advice 
(derived from a close study of Epictetus) — anyhow I'd cheer and comfort 
you and try to make you merry. 

' I'm always merry — I don't care — I won't care 

' Come to-morrow and we'll sneer aloud. Mr. Morris will, in the course 
of the evening — I should say coarse — Mr. Morris wiU, I repeat damn 
many things, and it is good to hear him, he will express himself in an 
uncompromising manner about life generally and will brace the nerves 
of the flaccid. 

' Dear old chap, come, and we dine as you know at yj. 

'Your afiect 

♦ Ned.' 

Many years afterwards De Morgan tried to recall his earliest 
impression of William Morris who was five years his senior. ' I 
first met him,' he writes, ' at Red Lion Square, where I was taken 
by Henry Holiday — the very earliest dawn of him to me being 
the AthencBiim review of his earliest poems (Dr. Gamett wrote 
it, I fancy), quoting Rapunzel. At this visit I chiefly recollect 
him dressing himself in vestments and playing on a regal, to 
illustrate certain points in connexion with stained glass. As I 
went home it suddenly crossed my mind as a strange thing that 
he should, while doing what was so trivial and almost grotesque, 
contrive to leave on my memory so strong an impression of his 
power — he certainly did, somehow.' 

Morris's own remarks concerning the value of first impressions 
may well have recurred to De Morgan in this connexion. 'Always 
trust your first impression,' Morris used to say ; ' it is pretty 
sure to be right. Later, you may fancy it was wrong, but you 
will invariably come back to it in the end ! ' — ' Morris,' De Morgan 



THE OLD MAN'S YOUTH 75 

remarked subsequently, 'was certainly the mor.t wonderful 
genius I ever knew. He produced poetry as readily as a bird 
sings ! ' One day, calling upon the Bume- Joneses, De Morgan, 
who adored children, wandered up to the nursery to pay 
his respects to little Margaret Bume- Jones ; and on coming 
downstairs again, he relates : ' I found Morris in the parlour — 
he was nibbling a pen. And he said, after a few words of chat — 
' Now, you see, I'm going to write poetry, so you'll have to cut 
— I'm sorry, but it can't be helped ! ' So I cut — and I have a 
notion that I know what he wrote that evening, as next Saturday 
when I turned up, as I always did then-a-days, he read us a lot 
of the study of Psyche. So I'm glad I cut ! — I recollect his 
remarking that it was very hard work writing that sort of thing. 
I took it that he was speaking of the thrashing Psyche gets at 
the hands of Venus. He really felt for her — and was evidently 
glad it was over.' 

Another early recollection of ' Top's ' moments of inspiration 
was even more impressive. Calling upon him one day in Great 
Ormond Street, De Morgan was startled by a shower of books 
which flew out of a window on the first floor. ' Oh, never mind, 
sir,' said the servant to him apathetically ; 'It's only Master 
composing ! ' 

Once while De Morgan was sitting with Morris, he received 
a visit from a wealthy Jew who wished to consult him about six 
panels in a scheme of decoration. After the man had departed, 
Morris sat absently pencilling upon the walls of the room a 
design resembling the figure 6. Thereupon De Morgan, who, 
according to his habit, had been idly scribbling on a sheet of 
paper, added to his previous flights of fancy the portrait, shown 
overleaf, of their late visitor, fashioned out of the same hiero- 
glyphic. 

Even at this date Morris was full of the enthusiasm for social 
reform which later became a dominant factor in his life. ' I 
go about,' he said to young De Morgan, ' preaching the divine 
gospel of Discontent.' To him contentment represented stagna- 
tion, the fatal barrier to progress. To De Morgan it was an 
inherent part of his temperament. Life, that ' shining and name- 
less thing,' was to him a riddle curious and interesting, which, 
in its different phases, he regarded with the eye of a philosopher 
— not a reformer. 

It was in another matter that the influence of William Morris 
upon his career at this juncture was pronounced. 

As an aftermath of the Tractarian movement, a strong 
impetus had been given to Church decoration during the years 
immediately preceding this period. The bare places of worship 
which had been approved by a more Puritanical generation, were 
being transformed under a growing desire for beauty of ornament 



76 



WILLIAM DE MORGAN 



and design. Decorative Art, in the ascendant, was recognized 
as a valuable asset of the Church ; and Jowett, writing to a 
friend in 1865, notices as a prominent sign of the times, the 







% %3i^ 



' aesthetic-Catholic revival going on in the London Churches. ' 
To meet the need of the age in matters both ecclesiastical and 
secular, Wilham Morris established himself as the champion of 
artistic handicraft. 



THE OLD MAN'S YOUTH 77 

Fresh from painting the Oxford Union, he and others of his 
fraternity met and discussed methods for rendering the common- 
place things of hie more beautifuL ' The first notion of the firm 
of Morris & Company, the name and wares of which have since 
become so widely spread,' relates Mr. Mackail, 'sprang up among 
friends in talk, and cannot be assigned to any single author. It 
was in a large measure due to Madox-Brov/n ; but perhaps even 
more to Rossetti, who, poet and idealist as he was, had business 
quahties of a high order, and the eye of a trained financier for 
anything which had money in it. To Morris himself, who had 
not yet been forced by business experience into being a business 
man, the firm probably meant little m.ore than a definite agree- 
ment for co-operation and common work among friends who were 
also artists ... of these associates Burne- Jones and Madox- 
Brown were regularly employed in making designs for stained 
glass, mainly, of course, for church windows.' Premises were 
taken at 8 Red Lion Square in 1861, a few doors from the rooms 
formerly shared in their bachelor days by IMorris and Burne- 
Jones ; although with the establishment there of the firm of 
' Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.,' many of those who had first 
discussed the scheme drifted to other occupations. ' The old 
Oxford Brotherhood, with its ideas of common life and united 
action, finally fell asunder ' ; Spencer-Stanhope, and others of 
the former fraternity remained no more than deeply interested 
spectators of the new venture ; while even ' Morris, Burne- Jones 
and Faulkner were actually in a minority in the new association.' 
The designing of v^^ork undertaken by the firm was, of course, 
mainly carried out by the members of the fi.rm themselves ; 
' but other artists, including Albert Moore, William De Morgan 
and Simeon Solomon, m.ade occasional designs for glass and 
tiles.' ^ In the basement a small kiln vras built for the firing 
of these. 

De Morgan v/as by now convinced that his first venture as 
an artist was a failure. ' I certainly,' he wrote many years 
afterwards, ' wa.s a feeble and discursive dabbler in picture- 
making. I transferred myself to stained-glass window-making, 
and dabbled in that too till 1872.' About the age of twenty-five 
he turned his attention to this new line of work, but he estimated 
his own powers in regard to the result too modestly. ' His 
designs for stained-glass windows were often remarkable,' was 
the verdict of his contemporary, Sir William Richmond, to which 
William Morris added his testimony, and the daughter of the 
latter. Miss May Morris, long years after, related how specimens 
of his glass which she saw hanging up in his home struck her as 
being ' singularly rich in colour and simple and dignified in 

* The Life oj William Morris, by J. W. Mackail, Vol. I, pp. 144-5. 



78 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

design.' The very suggestion of something primitive and 
mediseval in his conceptions which, as long as he adhered to 
painting pictures, involved a certain lack of pliability and life 
in his figures, fell into harmony with the ecclesiastical ideal at 
which he now aimed, as, too, did his love of quaint outline and 
intricate ornamentation ; while the glowing, jewel-like colours 
which he sought to produce, gave fresh scope for his love of 
scientific experiment. 

]\Ieanwhile the congenial fraternity with which he had become 
associated in the fresh impetus given to the Arts and Crafts did 
not in any measure monopolize his individual effort. He remained 
always apart, never even nominally connected with Morris's 
enterprise, and working on independent lines. ' A common 
error,' he said, later in life, ' is to suppose that I was a partner in 
Morris's firm. I was never connected with his business beyond 
the fact that, on his own initiative, he exhibited and sold my 
work, and that subsequently he employed my tiles in his schemes 
of decoration.' 

The first tile which De Morgan produced, a pink lustre, 
blurred and dull compared with his later work, he took to show 
to another friend, Horatio Lucas, by whose family it is still 
treasured. ' Keep that,' said Mr. Lucas privately to his wife, 
' for one day De Morgan will be a great man ! ' But altliough 
the painting of tiles was one of the primary occupations of 
the new Morris Firm in Red Lion Square, yet when, in process 
of time, De Morgan undertook the manufacture of these on a 
large scale, Morris decided that it was no longer necessary to 
continue this branch of his o\vn industrj?', and subsequently he 
procured all requisite tiles from De Morgan, executed in the 
latter's designs. ' Morris never made but three designs for my 
execution,' De Morgan once remarked — 'the Trellis and Tulip, 
the Poppy and another — I forget the name. I never could v/ork 
except by myself and in my own manner.' 

Thus first in London Street, then in Grafton Street, and finally 
at 40 Fitzroy Square, De Morgan conducted his own experiments 
in stained glass and soon, by a natural transition, in tiles and 
lustre-ware. ' His is the story,' related William Morris's daughter, 
man}' years after, ' of most of our Arts and Crafts workers of the 
mid and later nineteenth century — the impulse of invention that 
seeks for outlet — the invention brought to a dead stop by the loss 
of tradition in the crafts^ — the necessity of spending valuable 
time experimenting in the A B C of an Art, and patiently working 
it up in the path in which his instinct guides him.' At length, 
being dissatisfied with the reproductions of his designs and the 
poor interpretations of his ideas by others, De Morgan set up a 
kiln in the cellar of the house in Fitzroy Square in order to attempt 
his own reproductions, and ran the flue through an old chimney 



THE OLD MAN'S YOUTH 79 

of the building. Miss Laura Hertford, who rented the floor 
above, an artist who had the distinction of being the first lady 
ever to exhibit in the Royal Academy, viewed these proceedings 
with considerable mistrust. ' You will burn the house down ! ' 
she remonstrated ; but William De Morgan had no misgivings, 
and he thus describes the result : — 

' In '72 (or '70) I re-discoveved the lost Art of Moorish or Gubbio 
lustres. It had been re-discovered before in Italy in 1856 — but that I 
didn't know at the time, or I wouldn't have presumed. It has been 
re-discovered since, times out of number, and a glorious array of old Italian 
names. Maestro Giorgio of Gubbio, etc., is always trotted out to mount 
the re-discoverers on. I never did anything to justify a belief that the 
art of the cinquecento had been re-discovered — it was merely the pigment. 
But that's neither here nor there. 

' Well ! — in the course of my re-discoveries, the flame from my kiln 
discovered a wood-joist in the house chimney of 40 Fitzroy Square, and 
the roof got burned off. This incendio sat for the fire at C. Vance and 
Co's. I hadn't any money, so when my new factory-to-be was discussed, 
I demurred on the ground that I couldn't find a locus for it, and keep the 
stained glass on, perhaps. A friend offered capital, and I moved from 
the ruins of my Carthage. I started afresh as a potter, but I lost my 
stained glass, which was bringing me more than I have ever earned since.' * 

' The landlord didn't seem at all amiable ! ' De Morgan 
remarked pathetically, when referring to his act of incendiarism ; 
but this, to him, unreasonable peevishness on the part of the 
owner of the house certainly was the direct means of terminating 
one phase of his artistic career, and inaugurating another. Before 
dwelling on this new chapter in his life, however, we must glance 
briefly at certain events which were happening in his home circle, 
and the trend of which helped to clinch his new departure. 

His father. Professor De Morgan, had, as we have seen, joined 
University College in early youth, chiefly with a view to upholding 
the ideal of religious tolerance in matters educational. For 
thirty-six years he had held the Professorship with a disin- 
terested loyalty of attachment to that principle, since, as already 
mentioned, a man of limited means and large family, he could, 
with his brilliant acquirements, have readily obtained a more 
lucrative and advantageous appointment elsewhere. 

In 1866, however, the Professorship of Mental Philosophy 
and Logic at the College fell vacant, and the Rev, J, Martineau 
was a candidate for the chair. He was a distinguished 
scholar and admirably suited for election ; but he was rejected 
by the Council on the ground that he was a Unitarian, This 
was a departure from the ideal which the College had been 
founded to maintain — ' its loudly vaunted principle that the 
creed of neither teacher nor student was to be an element of his 

* A letter written in 1906 to Louis Joseph Vance. 



8o WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

competence to teach or learn,' and still more, the decision was, 
as Professor Dc Morgan pointed out in this particular instance, 
dictated by worldly considerations both unworthy and incon- 
sistent. ' The interference of the College as a College,' he wrote 
to Sir John Herschcl, ' and a settlement of this question officially, 
is a step in which it concerns me, with my way of thinking, to 
take a part.' Sincerity had been the guiding motive of Augustus 
De Morgan's life, and he at once resigned. ' It is unnecessary 
for me to leave the College — the College has left me,' he wrote, 
and in a fine and impassioned letter, which he addressed to the 
Council, he lamented bitterly their abandonment of that grand 
spirit of tolerance, ' in which there is more religion than in all 
exclusive systems put together,' Later, when it was desired to 
place some likeness of him in the Institution to whose adva.ntage 
he had devoted his life, he refused sternly : — 

' I am asked to sit for a bust or picture, to be placed in what is de- 
scribed as " our old College." This location is impossible ; our old College 
no longer exists. It was annihilated in November last. 

' The old College to which I was so many years attached by office, by 
principle, and by liking, had its being, lived and moved in the refusal of 
all religious disqualifications. Life and Soul are now extinct. 

' I will avoid detail. I may be writing to some who approve of it. 
To me the College is like a Rupert's drop ^ with a little bit pinched off 
the end ; that is, a heap of dust. . . .' 

But bravely as he faced the issue, the blow at the very root 
of the work to which his life had been devoted was felt by him 
severely. ' If force of will can succeed,' he said, ' the Institution 
is to pass away from before my mind and to become as if it had 
never existed.' But other causes at this date accentuated the 
mental grief and strain which resulted in a rapid undermining of 
his physical strength. 

As before mentioned, his eldest daughter, little Alice, had been 
in her grave since Christmas, 1853, a victim to phthisis. The 
year following the Professor's retirement from University College, 
his son George, then founder and secretary of the Mathematical 
Society — the one of all his children who had appeared destined 
to follow in his owti footsteps — succumbed to tuberculosis of the 
throat after three years of anxiety respecting his lungs. At that 
same date his other son, Edward, had been forced to go away for 
an eighteen-months' voyage in ' a very fluctuating state of health, 
which occasioned constant anxiety to his parents.' And still 
another cloud began to gather over the stricken family in the dire 

> A Rupert's drop is a drop of glass which is thrown while in a state 
of fusion into water, and consolidates into a retort-like shape. The bulb 
may be struck sharpl}'- with a hammer without breaking, but if the end of 
the tail be nipped oii, the whole flies into dust. 



THE OLD MAN'S YOUTH 81 

illness, from the same cause, of Chrissy, one time the merriest 
member of the home circle. 

The Professor faced these successive tragedies with pathetic 
patience. ' A strong and practical conviction of a better and 
higher existence,' he wrote to his old friend, Sir John Herschel, 
' reduces the whole thing to emigration to a country from which 
there is no way back and no mail packets, with a certainty oi 
following at a time to be arranged in a better way than I can do 
it.' But the time of his own departure was then nearer than he 
dreamed. An abnormally hot summer in 1868, acting on a 
constitution weakened by intense mental suffering, brought on a 
sharp attack of congestion of the brain ; and although he again 
rallied and his mental powers resumed much of their old vigour, 
the death of his daughter Christina in August, 1870, was, in seven 
months, followed by his own. 

For many years, as we have seen, he had been deeply interested 
in, and had closely investigated, tales of appearances of the dead 
to the dying. During the last two days of his life his son William, 
watching by him, observed that he seemed to recognize the 
presence of all those of his family whom he had lost by death— 
his three children, his mother and sister, all of whom he greeted 
audibly, naming them in the reverse order to that in which they 
left this world. Whether it was the wandering of a dying brain 
or a happy vision of actuality, who shall decide ? But the belief 
in which he lived, and in which he died, was proclaimed in the 
old fighting spirit by a characteristic sentence in his will : — 

' I commend my future with hope and confidence to Almighty God ; 
to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Whom I beheve in my heart 
to be the Son of God, but Whom I have not confessed with my hps, because 
in my time such confession has always been the way up in the world.'' 

To William, the loss of his father with whose character his 
own was so much akin ; the brooding shadow of death which had 
engulfed so many loved members of the home-circle and still 
hung threateningly over the survivors ; and the sudden catas- 
trophe which had overtaken his work just when it was promising 
to be a financial success— all came with a sequence of disaster 
which would have stunned a less buoyant temperament. Bui 
deeply as he suffered, he bore the ills of life with the elasticity ol 
a philosopher. If his former world had become a pinch of dust, 
all the more did it behove him to construct a new one. In 1872, 
with his mother and his sister Mary, the only remaining members 
of his family dependent on his care, he moved from the house at 
Primrose Hill, where his father had died, to No. 30 Cheyne Row, 
and there in the garden he established a kiln, and started life 
as a potter. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE CHELSEA PERIOD 

1872-1881 

THE house in which began the new era in De Morgan's career 
was in a quiet backwater of Chelsea, two doors removed 
from that occupied by Carlyle, a neighbour with whom Mrs. De 
Morgan had been acquainted from early life. It has been pointed 
out as singularly ' fitting that De Morgan, perhaps the greatest 
of all English Ceramic Artists, should have developed his art 
within a stone's throw of the site of the old Chelsea China works, 
of 150 years ago, and almost opposite the site of Wedgwood and 
Bentley's Chelsea Establishment.' 

' The Chelsea of to-day, ' writes Miss May Morris, ' is a gilded 
desert to those who knew it then. Cheyne Row was an unpre- 
tentious old-world corner at the upper end of which stood the 
beautiful little house built for G. P. Boyce by Philip Webb, the 
tree-tops of its pleasant garden waving above the high brick 
wall ; from here looking down on the Row one caught glimpses 
of the light on the river and the red-sailed barges ; and one of 
the charms of the place w^as the sense of adventure that a quiet 
corner gleans from that sight of the way into the open world.' 

The lingering romance of Chelsea, its still visible links with 
a picturesque Past ; the Old Church with its lore of history 
and its monuments to a vanished race ; above aU, the placid 
grey river bearing on its breast the world's traffic while reflecting 
the wayward moods of cloud and sunshine — all made a strong 
appeal to De Morgan which never diminished throughout the 
forty-six years which he was destined to reside in the locality. 

In those early days he would cross the old wooden bridge 
then leading to Battersea, and pausing midway, would remind 
himself of the favourite superstition connected with it. For 
the Chelsea of that day believed firmly that seven currents of air 
met in the centre span of the bridge with wonderful health-giving 
properties ; and long years after this superstition had died, De 
Morgan to his delight found a carpenter who insisted that he 
had had practical experience of its truth. On a bitter March 
day, fifty years previously, this man's mother had taken him to 

82 



A 



THE CHELSEA PERIOD 83 

stand on the bridge with his six brothers and sisters who were 
all suffering from whooping-cough, and the value of the cure was 
surely proved, for not one of them died, but — as the sceptical 
may point out do other children similarly afflicted — all survived 
to grow up hale and strong ! 

Little as De Morgan dreamed it, one more romance was to 
be added to the history of that former river-side village in the 
story of the busy potter who now, amid drab, modern surround- 
ings, strove to weave things of beauty out of his fertile brain. 
Yet, for a time, though deeply occupied in developing his pottery, 
he still occasionally drew designs for stained-glass windows. 
It was during this transitional period in his art that he designed 
the stained glass for a large drawing-room which Sir Samuel 
Marling was adding to his house, Stanley Park, and also manu- 
factured lustre tiles for the hearth of the same room, as well as 
a set of little boys smoking, for the chimney piece in the smoking- 
room there. In reference to this, the Rev. George West, Sir 
Samuel's nephew, remarks : — 

' The Grisaille work in the windows is very good ; but some 
square divisions between the mullions are filled with very large 
heads of Shakespeare, Dante, etc., as De Morgan thought the 
room was to be a library. They are too large in scale ; but three 
full-length figures of the seasons are very fine. About this date 
I used to go to his mother's house in Cheyne Row pretty frequently 
on Sunday afternoons, and it was delightful to meet aU the 
celebrities there, but the newly-fledged High-art people used to 
pose and attitudinize, and De Morgan used to make great game 
of their affectations. I also visited his studio and used often 
to suggest buying something which took my fancy, but always 
met with the same answer, " Oh — I don't think I can spare that 
just now ! " 

' I subsequently lost sight of him and only many years after- 
wards met him unexpectedly in Florence. The tall, brisk figure 
was then slightly bowed, and iron-grey locks had replaced the 
chestnut hair of earlier days, but the identity of the man was 
unmistakable, and I greeted him with delighted recollection. 
Reminiscences and platitudes were exchanged, and I made the 
somewhat hackneyed remark that the Arno was smelling very 
badly. "Yes," replied De Morgan thoughtfully, "there have 
been a good many suicides lately. But " — sniffing gently — " I 
don't think it is quite a smell of suicide ! " ' 

Besides occasionally reverting to stained-glass work, De 
Morgan during the early years of his art as a potter stiU continued 
to paint a few pictures of a decorative character ; but these 
were principally done with the object of experimenting in pig- 
ments — to test some novel chemical process which often resulted 
in a peculiar brilliance and beauty of colouring, but which, in 



84 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

many instances, doomed them to perish prematurely, owing to 
the dryness of the medium that he had mixed with the paint. 
Of these, ' The Alchemist's Daughter ' was one of the most 
successful, and a picture of St. George accompanied by a 
Goblin, in connexion with which must be mentioned his first 
acquaintance with a lady who afterwards celebrated it in 
verse. 

On Christmas Day, 1873, De Morgan joined in the festivities 
at the Grange with the Burne- Joneses. ' In the hall,' writes 
Lady Burne- Jones, ' there was a magic lantern and snap-dragon. 
Charles Faulkner and William De Morgan enchanted us all by 
their pranks, in which Morris and Edward Poynter occasionally 
joined, while Mrs. Morris, placed safely out of the way, watched 
everything from her sofa.' At this party, playing with their 
cousins Phihp and Margaret Burne- Jones, were little Rudyard 
Kipling and his brilliant sister Alice, or Trix, afterwards Mrs. 
Fleming, whose father, John Lockwood Kipling, the son of a 
Wesleyan Minister, had married a sister of Lady — then Mrs. — 
Burne- Jones. Alice Fleming in later life shared much of her 
brother's singular genius, and wrote verses the lilt and rhythm 
of which are full of music. Some of her most successful poems, 
however, were said to be written while she was in a trance ; and, 
Dn De Morgan's picture of St. George, she sent him, fully twenty 
years after that Christmas party, what she terms ' some rough 
verses anent your picture ' which, she explains, were written in 
lutomatic writing. 



St. George in the Transvaal 

He lost his way at eventide 

And wandering where the paths divide, 

He found a gobhn by liis side 

A satyr child, 

Whose look was wild. 
The day drew on to eventide. 

Ah! good St. George, at eventide. 
Choose not a goblin for thy guide. 
Or things of terror may betide 

Before moonrise, 

Beneath thine eyes ; 
Go forth alone where paths divide. 

St. George knew well the goblin lied 
But yet he took him for his guide 
And on through shadows dappled, pied. 

He led the Knight, 

At fall of night, 
Until they reached the water -side. 




K 



THE CHELSEA PERIOD 85 

St. George's own betrothed bride 
Prayed for him still at eventide 
Within the chapel of St. Vide. 

A world away 

She knelt to pray : 
He needed prayer with such a guide. 

The blue waves kis.sed the bouldered beach. 
Far on the billows out of reach, 
There shone a wondrous form to teach 

Fear to a Knight, 

A faery sight : — 
The satyr child laughed on the beach. 

A sea nymph with gold rippled hair 
Rocked on the ripples, free from care. 
She had no soul, she was so fair, — 

St. George, I pray. 

Look not that way. 
Poor mortal strength has much to bear. 

Queen Mary, pity now thy Knight 

For he is in an evil plight 

Standing alone — twixt nj'mph and sprite— 

Ah Princess pray 

A world away — 
Keep watch and vigil all the night. 

The Princess is so very far — 
As distant as the evening star ; 
The nymph is near withouten bar. 

The Knight is young. 

Her honeyed tongue 
Would win Apollo from his car. 

Full many a Knight at eventide 

Still wanders on through paths untried, 

While loved ones pray 

A world away — 
For his dear feet that go astray ! 

Ere long De Morgan's wealth of imagination and earnestness 
of endeavour brought about one happy result in the development 
of his pottery — a noticeable extension of output. His smaU 
kilns, erected in a shed at the end of the back garden in his new 
home, soon proved inadequate to his needs. A few doors higher 
in the street, No. 36, was a spacious old house with a larger 
garden, known as Orange House, which stood upon the site now 
occupied by the Roman Catholic Church of the Holy Redeemer, 
and this De Morgan proceeded to rent from Mr. Wickliam Flower 
as a show-room and workshop, while still continuing to reside at 
No. 30. An old coach-house which stood between the north 
side of Orange House and Upper Chejme Row made an excellent 
shelter for the bigger kiki which he now proceeded to set up, 



86 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

while — despite the previous disastrous experience in Fitzroy 
Square — a flue, with happy recklessness, was carried up one ol 
the old chimneys of the house. The first floor was given up to 
the leading painters in his employ. The show-room, with a 
store-room at the back, occupied the whole ground floor. Foi 
himself De Morgan reserved a room on the second floor which 
he used as a studio, and in which he often slept when working 
late at night. 

It was characteristic that he started his occupation of his 
new premises with a catastrophe due to his impatience to get 
under way. It is essential to go to work very cautiously with 
a new kiln, and to test it thoroughly before attempting to fire 
any contents. But De Morgan had on hand an order for a 
thousand tiles of a fan-shaped flower pattern which he called 
the B.B.B., after the firm Barnard, Bishop and Barnard. Anxious 
to complete this, at his very first firing, when the heat was at 
its strongest, he blew the top of the new kiln off, and the order 
for the B.B.B. was, as he expressed it, ' temporarily re-named 
the D.D.D. ! ' 

Already prominent amongst his painters in those early 
days were Charles and Fred Passenger. The former, who was 
a cripple, worked with De Morgan for nearly thirty years, 
the latter, despite ill-health, for twenty-eight. Their initials 
appear on much of his pottery, and their work has a distinctive 
quality very apparent. Dr. Reginald Thompson likewise, who 
became a great friend of De Morgan, took part in the designing, 
and some of his productions and reproductions are extremely 
clever, particularly those of animals and birds, in which he 
excelled. He and De Morgan would vie with each other in 
inventing grotesque beasts and monsters, and laugh like happy 
schoolboys when either succeeded in evolving some more than 
usually fantastic creature. As a result of this friendship. Dr. 
Thompson eventually married De Morgan's sister Annie, and 
their three brilliant sons inherited much of the talent of their 
mother's family. 

Another, but younger, artist of great skill, whose work belongs 
to a rather later date, was Joe Juster, the vases which he painted 
and initialled deserving to rank amongst some of the finest work. 
In De Morgan's employ likewise were half a dozen girls who were 
engaged on Dutch and other tiles, and who occupied a room in 
one of the adjacent houses in Upper Cheyne Row. 

Mr. Reginald Blunt, in a delightful chapter on ' Etrurians 
in Chelsea,' describes how De Morgan's painters enjoyed their 
labours in their pleasant abode ' where the workshop was not, 
as later at Merton and Fulham, away from the cheery haunts 
of humanity, and where the ' carriage folk ' visiting the show- 
room below enlivened their window view, and the feeling that 



THE CHELSEA PERIOD 87 

one or other of their productions was at that moment finding 
a purchaser downstairs gave a touch of hvely interest and reahty 
to their doings. De Morgan was constantly in and about, working 
out designs upstairs, counselling and correcting the decorators, 
meeting friends and visitors below, or superintending the packing 
of a kiln in the outhouse ; and towards evening would often be 
heard a big voice shouting " Bill ! " and footsteps mounting 
the stairs three at a time like a schoolboy's, which told of the 
arrival of William Morris with ruffled hair and indigo-stained 
fingers, keen to discuss some new project or just to hear how 
things were going with his friend. '^ 

' Many a time,' relates Miss Morris, ' when our Hammersmith 
quartette paid a visit to the Chelsea trio, we would go round to 
Orange House after tea, and spend part of the long summer 
evening wandering through the house and garden eager over 
the latest experiment. There were times when a kiln spoilt 
cast a slight cloud on the gathering in spite of the gentle courtesy 
of our friend, who would not even mention the mishap ; times 
when a pot that had roused no special expectation came out a 
triumph of shining colour amongst the ruin of a whole firing ; 
there were " spoilt " pieces that one could not help loving for 
some special quality in them — in short a whole chapter of the 
story which, passing under the eyes of those familiar with the 
building up of a craft, was alive with incidents hailed and followed 
with keenest interest.' 

But of the wearing anxiety connected with the work — the 
need for a cool head and a brave heart braced to meet failure, 
Mr. Blunt can speak from experience. 

' No one,' he records, ' who has not been actually engaged in 
fine pottery work can quite realize the strain and tension of the 
firing of a big pottery kiln, in which, it may be, hundreds of 
pounds' worth of decorative work, and months of arduous labour, 
are put to the hazard of the flames ; when a whiff of unregulated 
draught, an ill-secured saggar, a few degrees more or less of 
furnace temperature, a slight misjudgment of the critical moment 
of completion — any one of the dozen swiftly changing conditions 
— may mean all the difference between success and disaster. 
More than once I have been by William De Morgan's side at 
these supremely critical moments and admired the coolness and 
quiet resource — the high-pitched voice never quitting its resonant 
drawl — which marked the excitement of a big issue in the balance. 
But the end, whatever it was, was sure to reveal the rare good 
traits, the grit, perseverance, and invincible good-humour ; 
boyish delight, it may be, in a fine thing finely achieved ; at 
the worst, an object lesson or a clue won and registered, with a 
smile, from failure.' 

* The Wonderful Village, by Reginald Blunt, p. 174. 



88 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

To Mr. Shaw Sparrow, De Morgan later described certain 
details of his process thus : — 

' (i) The wondrous, varied beauty of lustre depends on the decom- 
position of a metaUic salt, usually copper or silver. 

' (2) The salt is made into a paint by means of a gum fluid and lamp 
black, the latter being used to enable the painter to see distinctly his 
design. 

' (3) The design is painted on the smooth enamel or glaze after the 
glaze has been fired. 

' (4) I use tin glaze, as I find it sensitive to lustre work. 

' (5) After the design painted on the glaze is dry, the pot or dish ia 
fired again. 

' (6) In the old Persian tiles, wood provided all the heat. With a 
coke (or a gas) kiln, at a given moment, when the heat has produced a 
certain tint and glow of incandescent effect, burning chips of wood are put 
inside the kiln ; then the minute and heated particles of carbon in the 
smoke combine with the oxygen of the salt, setting free the metal, wliich 
is left in a finely-divided state fixed on the enamel's surface.' 

To the uninitiated, primarily in consequence of the uniformity 
demanded in tile production, the gulf is not always apparent 
which separates the original work of the genuine artist from a 
mere mechanical reproduction of printed designs. Of this fact 
De Morgan was keenly aware, and in regard to it he v/rote as 
follows to Mr. Shaw Sparrow : — 

' The painting, as you know, is executed not on the tiles but on thin 
paper. The colour used is the ordinary underglaze colours (or at least 
one ordinary ditto), the paper is attached to the tile face down, the pattern 
reversing, and the paper burns av/ay under the glaze. 

' There has been some confusion of ideas in connexion with this 
process between it and printing, as in ordinary etched plate printing, 
block-printing as in wall-papers, and stencilling. The confusion, I believe, 
has been possible only in minds where the last three processes, all totally 
distinct, were already plunging chaotically against one another. The 
tiles printed in my way are painted line by line and tint by tint, just as 
much as pictures in exhibitions, and are just as little to be described as 
prints as such pictures would be after they had been relieved and trans- 
ferred to another canvas. The Madonna di San Sisto, for example, is, 
quite distinctly, not a print in an)^ sense of the word. 

' Of course the fact that the tiles of one pattern are all alike, contributes 
to the 'dea that they are printed. But things that are painted alike are 
alike, and the reasons these have to be painted so are of a purely com- 
mercial nature. Nevertheless the system is thoroughly unwholesome. 
Things painted by hand have no value unless the qualities that give value 
to the hand-painting are present ; and in my opinion the sooner the 
acquiescence in the commercial demand for exact uniformity comes to an 
end the better. Repetition work ought to be very cheap, and done by 
repeating processes.' 

One difficulty with which De Morgan had to contend was 
the lack of unity of interpretation between himself and the 
draughtsmen on whom he depended for the reproduction of his 
ideas. The weakness of all modem craftsmanship is an over- 




'William De Morgan fecit 

[Tile in the possession of Mr. Balsey Ricardo. 



THE CHELSEA PERIOD 89 

refined finish ; and he was keenly aUve to this trouble ; the 
designer and ihe draughtsman being often so dissimilar in 
temperament that the former had to copy the latter instead of 
interpreting him ; and if the copying became too mechanical and 
laboured, much of the spontaneity of the original was inevitably 
lost. On one design still in existence De Morgan himself has 
noted for his fellow-worker : ' I want you to use your own dis- 
cretion as much as possible ' ; and there were times when the 
reproduction of his work was as out of harmony with the spirit 
of his intention as can be a symphony of Beethoven under the 
hands of an unskilled musician. 

Thus the pottery done directly under his personal super- 
vision alone bears the stamp of his individual genius. In other 
specimens, although his designs were utilized by his workmen, 
the subtle grace of the original lines and the vitality of the original 
conception was too often lost or marred. An old workman who 
laboured with him early in his career, used to relate how De 
Morgan was so particular with all work which came under his 
direct inspection that often after a vase was quite finished — to 
the superficial observer exquisitely hand-painted and ready for 
baking — he would, if he did not consider it was absolutely flaw- 
less, toss it relentlessly on the floor and smash it into a thousand 
pieces. 

At all times so absorbed was he in creating and supervising 
that he would forget all besides. Reminded that it was long 
past his dinner hour, he would rush off to the nearest baker's, 
buy a piece of bread, and returning in haste would eat it absently 
while continuing his examination or direction of the work going 
on around him. This absorption in the creative and constructive 
part of his business involved a corresponding indifference to its 
prosaic side, and it is said that, more than once he forgot to sign 
the cheques when he paid his men — a lapse which they treated 
with good-humoured indulgence, often omitting to point it out 
till the wages again fell due upon the week following. 

There indeed existed between master and men a cheery 
catnaraderie totally different from the usual status of employer 
and employed. The factory was more like some private guild, 
in which there was a community of interest. Each man recog- 
nized that he was part of a great whole in which the humblest 
worker was necessary to the success at which all alike aimed ; 
and from the smallest boy employed in laying ground and colour 
and glaze on the plain tiles and brick facings, each member of 
that little fraternity was inspired with a feeling of personal pride 
in, and personal responsibility for, their united achievement. 
Nor was there one who did not share in the triumph when the 
master pronounced his satisfaction over some rare and lovely 
specimen which had issued in glowing perfection from its ordeal 



90 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

by fire. Yet De Morgan's highest praise was usually a boyish 
expression of delight. ' That is very jolly ! ' he would say 
briefly ; and only the vibration in his voice would reveal the 
strain of past tension, and the inexpressible joy of the creator in 
the thing victoriously created. 

At this date, De Morgan did not make his o\\ti biscuit ; he 
employed for his lustre-ware large dishes such as were exported 
to Persia and India for use as rice dishes, while the tiles and pots 
were mostly painted on a red clay body which came from Poole, 
Dorset, or was supplied by the Stourbridge Fire Clay Co., though 
a few were made with clay from the Battersea Crucible Works. 
All tiles manufactured by him during this period, however, may 
be distinguished from those of a later date by the raised bars on 
the reverse side. Meanwhile, like William Morris, he lamented 
the appearance of London houses — dull buildings in a dull atmo- 
sphere, from which the soot-grime could only be removed by the 
tiresome process of re-painting. It ought to be practicable, 
Morris maintained, to clean all houses in a dirty city by turning 
on a hose ; and to De Morgan it seemed that the only exterior 
decoration at once suitable and picturesque under such conditions 
were tiles, which were at once gay and washable, if only they 
could be made to resist the vagaries of a changeable climate. 

' At some date in the early seventies,' he wrote later, ' I was 
struck by the fact that the employment of tiles in European 
buildings never approached in extent the use that I have alwa\'s 
understood has been made of them in other countries, especially 
in Persia. This seemed particularly noticeable in external work. 
In my frequent conversations with architects, I noticed that 
the reason invariabh^ alleged for this last was that the tiles would 
not bear the frost or hold tight on cement or mortar. Observa- 
tion confirmed this. I also remarked that tiles pointed at as 
having these defects were alwaj's the pressed dust tiles, or Minton 
tiles (so-called, because the invention of the press was either 
Herbert Minton 's, or because he bought the patent). In time 
I came to the conclusion that the artificially compacted clay 
differed in molecular structure from that of natural shrinkage 
from the wet. It is more absorbent, or rather absorbs with 
^eater capillary attraction (for I doubt the same bulk of pressed 
tile absorbing as much water as one of ours ; but I don't know). 
Of course I did not then know that tiles I made myself from wet 
clay would stand frost and wet. I only believed it.' 

Thus De Morgan, having found that it was not much more 
sxpensive to make his own tiles than to buy them, experimented 
with diligence and discovered that clay such as he manufactured 
and baked personally would answer satisfactorily for purposes 
of external facing in architecture. The result of this conclusion 
will be referred to later. 



THE CHELSEA PERIOD 91 

Besides his experiments in this matter, his inventions in 
connexion with his work were many and various. He always 
designed his own kilns and chimneys ; he planned a clever 
revolving grate ; and he devoted much time to the construction 
of grinding mills. Amongst the sketches which he made in 
regard to the latter, one shows the grinding process from the 
breaking up of the grist to grinding to the finest powder. 
Another shows balls upon balls, from large series to small ones, 
grinding ever finer and finer. He further invented a process- 
painting in oils, in which glycerine, employed as a medium, was 
productive of a remarkable richness of colouring ; also a new 
process of glass-stain ; as well as a method of ceramic casting 
which obviated the loss of sharpness in the forms involved when 
covering over the design with a glaze — a loss noticeable in the 
Delia Robbia ware. 

Mr. Blunt points out how, ' contradictory as it sounds, it was 
perhaps, to some extent, the wide range of William De Morgan's 
inventive and creative ability which tended in a measure 
to hamper the success of the pottery. Apart altogether from 
the creation of designs, his chemical investigations into the 
qualities and kiln-behaviour of various bodies, calcines, frits, 
and glazes, and the practical improvements he introduced in the 
design of ovens and kilns, and the regulations of temperatures 
and draught, were of course an essential and most valuable part 
of the work. . . . But the versatile genius for contrivance and 
improvements which he inherited from his father was not, as he 
said, to be impounded, either aesthetically or technically ; and 
was devoted impartially also to the evolution of telegraph codes, 
of tile pattern indexes, of systems of accounts, of machinery 
design, of stock reference lists, and other side issues which poorer 
brains could have tackled well enough. De Morgan's mind was 
ever full of original methods and ideas on all sorts of subjects 
. . . and he was always loath to accept preconceived systems 
of doing things until he had made trial of his own.'^ Thus among 
his papers still exist bundles of carefully written treatises on 
mechanical questions covering an amazing variety of subjects, 
each disquisition revealing an astonishing grasp of the matter 
with which, for the time being, he was coping. 

One of his former workmen, Mr. Bale, contributes some 
interesting recollections of these methods, which are best given 
in his own words : — 

Mr. Bale's Narrative. 

* It is about fifty years ago I was sent to Mr. De Morgan, on 
the recommendation of Mr. William Morris, as painter. This 

-, • * The Wonderful Village, pp. 187-8. 



92 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

was the first time I ever saw anything of tile and pottery work ; 
everything was so strange and fascinating that it acted hke a 
spell upon me, and I could not resist studying it night and 
day. 

' Well, the first thing I had to do was to outline on a piece of 
glass the design in brown colour, same as is used in glass painting 
— I subsequently found out. This piece of glass with the design 
was fired, then given to me with sheets of tissue paper cut about 
8 inches square, then a solution was made, tinted green. I had 
to dip the tissue paper in the solution, lay it on some blotting 
paper to take up the superfluous water, then I had to paint on the 
glass (with the design on it) a solution of gum and glycerine 
around the pattern, pick up the damp paper and lay it even over 
the design, then paint on the paper the design in different colours 
when thoroughly dry, then gently pull the paper off the glass 
and lay it aside to be eventually stuck down with a solution of 
soluble glass upon Dutch enamelled tiles. This was given to the 
kiln man who covered it with a powdered soft glass, then put it 
into the kiln to fire. 

' Mr. De Morgan at this date often used Dutch enamel tiles, it 
was a long time before he made his own tiles. When he got his 
own (which were always made of fire-clay) he had to get a white 
ground, this white ground, or paste, was made of silica, and was 
the medium of sticking the paper paintings on to the tiles. This 
paste was extremely good ; but unfortunately there was always 
likely to be trouble — and one which was hardly ever got over, as 
it used to split up in little holes, consequently they had to be 
touched up and re-fired. I maintain that this was the cause of 
a great deal of loss, and if it hadn't been for the vases and plaques 
in the lustre and Persian designs, he could never have kept on 
with the expensive business. 

' Also he never painted straight on to the tiles, like the vases, 
he did them on tissue paper. . , . Every Persian vase, or 
nearly so, turned out in his pottery had a starting by his own 
hand ; of course often he would suppl}^ drawings to be carried 
out by his painters, — but while he superintended the work he 
never allowed any of us to put our own designs on. 

' I remember one occasion when I took it upon myself to break 
through this rule and finish a pot I had been all day at work on. 
Mr. De Morgan would begin a design, say with a flower or a bit 
of ornament, and then tell us to put just so many around ; and 
we had to wait sometimes hours at a time before he came back, 
and meanwhile we did not dare to put another little bit here or 
there. Well, on this particular pot there was just a little space 
left to finish the design, and I had been waiting such a very long 
time that at last I didn't think it could make any difference if I 
just finished it the same as the rest. No sooner had I done it, 



THE CHELSEA PERIOD 93 

however, than he comes to finish it, and directly he says — " Why 
did you put that in ? " 

' I answered (quite simply), " I thought it wouldn't matter 
and would save time ! " 

' " / thought ! " he repeated — " Please understand I don't pay 
you to think ! If you think again, you must think elsewhere ! " 

* Ever after that I took care not to think, but calmly waited. 
It taught me a lesson for the future, although he wasn't cross 
about it. I must say he was a very kind-hearted man to all who 
worked for him, and always thinking of the welfare of his men. 

' I remember seeing him make his own engravings for illus- 
trations of a Nursery book written by his sister ; ^ it was a 
very clever dodge — this is how it was done. He would get a 
sheet of window glass ; upon that he spread a very thin coating 
of his paste, or white ground, which he used for his tiles, just 
simply let it dry, without heating it, and he then used a fine 
needle and scratched or engraved the subject, just as anyone 
would do an engraving on steel ! And where he wanted greater 
depth in the block, he piled his paste high up. When all was 
then dried by the fire he pours over it, to the depth of a metal 
block, say three-quarters of an inch of molten sulphur or brim- 
stone. This used to come clean away, and he would send this 
block of sulphur to the printers and they could print direct from 
it, but on account of the pressure they used to make a metal cast 
instead. I should very much like to get one of those Nursery 
books illustrated by him ; they will be very valuable as a speci- 
men of his work. 

' I remember when he was experimenting to get a material for 
making mosaics he tried several times by spreading his paste on 
both sides of a sheet of window glass, baking it, and absolutely 
splitting the sheet in two. I also was trying with him at the 
same time, and he allowed me to take some of his tile-patterns or 
paintings on the tissue paper which I took to a man who made 
ink bottles, and got him to throw a sheet of molten glass over 
the papers on an iron plate ; but it was not a success — no doubt 
if they had been rolled out while hot it would have been success- 
ful. 

' Then I tried his paste upon a wet tile, and got Frank lies, who 
was his kiln man, to fire it, and it came clean away ; but Mr. 
De Morgan, being a chemist to the backbone, adopted it by using 
a solution that was always used for his mosaics. 

' He and Mr. Morris tried a lot of mosaic work. The very 
first piece executed by Mr. De Morgan was a very large (almost 
life-size) mosaic ; it took me about eight weeks to do. I believe 
he sent it to America. It was the Virgin sitting down with the 

* On a Pincushion, by Mary De Morgan, published 1877. 



94 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

Book open on her lap ; the colours were simply magnificent — 
the dress a most beautiful blue. 

' Mr. Morris was always coming round to get ideas from Mr. 
De Morgan, and would carry off his finest work. Mr. De Morgan 
just let him take it and never bothered. We used to hide fine 
pots sometimes, as we didn't like them going. 

' There is a book in existence somewhere — perhaps stolen — a 
large book made out of brown paper with a number of small 
figures in white paper stuck on the brown by Mr. De Morgan. 
They were very wonderful. 

*Mr. De Morgan was an extraordinary man, and could do 
anything he turned his mind to. I certainly think all the years 
I have known him he was the cleverest man I ever came across. 
But I wonder why it is that writers who write about lustres in 
England, never recognize him as he ought to be. I have just 
seen a book where all the modern (so-called) producers of lustre 
are highly spoken of, but he is just casually mentioned as one 
who did tiles ; anyone would imagine from this that he was 
only a tile-maker, and didn't do fine pottery ! That's all the 
thanks his countrymen give him after spending several fortunes 
on it not only in perfecting the Lustre, but being, I maintain, the 
first to revive that beautiful lost Art, as well as impro\ang on the 
glorious Persian colouring — absolutely, I may say, giving it 
away — actually showing others how to do the Lustre. Yet not 
a writer has yet given him his due ! 

' Another book I have read about Lustres — well, it seems to 
me they don't know anything about it, because what they caU 
Copper Lustre is nothing more nor less than Gold Lustre — they 
don't know the difference ! I maintain Mr. De Morgan's copper 
and moonlight, or silver Lustre, is the true style that Gubbio 
did. A lot of people think that the Majolica is made from copper, 
but this is easily tested in a very simple way without injuring 
the lustre, by just putting the tiniest spot of Fluoric acid on it 
— if it is copper it will immediately turn green ; if gold, or any 
other, it will turn brown or muddy colour.' 

We shall have occasion to refer again to the reminiscences 
of Mr. Bale, who, it must be added, states that he was never 
allowed by his master to see the firing process. For the present 
it may be well to glance at De Morgan's own account of the 
technical side of his work. In 1892 he read a paper before the 
Society of Arts for which he was given the Gold Meda.1, and 
although this belongs to a date later than the period with which 
We are now dealing, yet it epitomizes his efforts from the com- 
mencement of his career. It shows convincingly, moreover, not 
only his mastery of the chemical and mechanical details con- 
nected with that work, but his profound knowledge of the 



THE CHELSEA PERIOD 95 

evolution of the whole Art of Pottery from almost prehistoric 
times. For although still fond of describing himself lightly as 
a dabbler in ceramics, he was, as in all else to which he devoted 
attention — no trifler, and his eager craftsmanship never resulted 
in a corresponding superficiality of method. After tracing the 
development of both experiment and achievement in Lustre 
from the remote ages, he remarks : — 

' In the catalogue of the Great Exhibition of 1851, which is a sort of 
death register of the arts of antiquity, not a hint of lustred pottery appears. 
The modern revivals began with those at the Ginori factory at Doccia 
near Florence, and those of Carocci at Gubbio. ... (A story is told by 
Marchese Brancaleone of the re-discovery at Gubbio, that an old painted 
unfired piece, of the Giorgio time, was found in what was supposed to be 
his old kiln house. One of these fell into a scaldino, and remained in 
contact with the fuel. Next day it was found that a lustre had developed 
on it !) 

' In spite of the Doccia and Gubbio reproductions, an impression 
continued to prevail that the process was a secret. I used to hear it talked 
about among artists, about twenty-five years ago, as a sort of potter's 
philosopher's stone. At that date the attempts to reproduce it in England 
had met with only very partial success, although an Italian had gone the 
round of the Staffordshire potteries showing how to do it. Even now it 
is sometimes spoken of as a secret by newspaper writers. My attention 
was attracted to some very interesting work of Massier, of Cannes, in the 
last Paris Exhibition, by a newspaper paragraph headed " Re-discovery 
of a Lost Art." 

' In fact re-discovery appears to have dogged the footsteps of the 
lustres from the beginning. I re-discovered them myself in 1874 or 
thereabouts, and in the course of time some of my employes left me, and 
re-discovered them again somewhere else ! — I do not think any re-dis- 
coveries of this sort contributed in any way to the verj^ general diffusion 
of the process in the potteries at tins moment. . . . Perhaps we may 
make a new departure and consider that the process is as well known as 
any other process in the arts ; at any rate I will contribute what I can to 
make it so, by telling all I know of it myself. 

' I got nothing from Piccolpasso, as I did not see the work till long 
after, nor from any printed information, except the chemical manuals I 
had read in youth. The clue was furnished by the yellow stain of silver 
on glass. When over-fired this shows iridescence, which is often visible 
on the opaque yellow visible from the outside on stained-glass windows. 
I tried the stain on Dutch tiles, and found them unsusceptible in the glass 
kiln, but in a small glass muffle, I found that both copper and silver gave 
a lustre when the gas was damped down so as to penetrate the muffle. I 
pursued my investigation, and after an interruption occasioned by setting 
the house on fire and burning the roof off, I developed the process in Chel- 
sea. This was in 1873-4, since which time it has not varied materially, 
although I have tried many experiments, with a view to improving it.' ^ 

With regard to these experiments which, at the date when 
this paper was read, had extended over a period of twenty years, 
the reader is recommended to study De Morgan's own account, 

i * ' Lustre-ware,' by William De Morgan. Journal of the Society oj 
Arts, pp. 761-763, June 24, 1892. 



96 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

which sufficiently proves — modestly as he would have depre- 
cated this conclusion — the tireless patience, ingenuity and 
learning which he had brought to bear upon this subject. ' As 
far as the technical difficulties of simply evolving a copper or a 
silver lustre go,' he says, ' I see no reason why, as in the case of 
the Arabs and Italians, every discovery should not be totally 
unconnected with every other.' And assuring his audience that 
if ' anyone sees his way to using the materials to good purpose, 
my experience, which I regard as an entirely chemical and 
mechanical one, is quite at his disposal,' he states : — 

' As we now practise it [the lustre process] it is as follows. The pigment 
consists simply of white clay mixed with copper scale or oxide of silver, 
in proportion varying according to the strength of colour we desire to get. 
It is painted on to the already fused glaze with water, and enough gum- 
arabic to harden it for handling and make it work easily — a little lamp- 
black, or other colouring matter, makes it pleasanter to work with. I have 
tried many additions to this pigment . . . but without superseding the 
first simple mixture. . . .' 

But although De Morgan repudiated the idea that the art 
of reproducing the old lustre-ware was extinct till he revived 
it, the consensus of opinion unhesitatingly attributes its recrud- 
escence to his efforts, ^ as was also the revival of the beautiful old 
Persian ware, with its wonderful blues and greens, so vivid in 
hue that they pale all colours with which they come in contact.* 
Still more is the fact now being accepted that he was the greatest 
ceramic artist whom England has produced, not excepting 
Wedgwood, who, in certain technical details, and, above all, in 
mastery of design, failed to attain to the high level reached by 
De Morgan. At the date, however, when the latter read the 

* The EncyclopcBdia Britannica in a long article on ' Pottery ' published 
before De Morgan attained to the zenith of his career, stated : — 

' Mr. De Morgan of Chelsea and Merton has perhaps made the greatest 
advances of all, having re-discovered the way to make and use the beauti- 
ful thickly-glazed blues and greens of the old Persian ware. 

' He uses tliese splendid colours in designs conceived and drawn with 
the old spirit, but of sufficient originality to make them a real stage in the 
development of Ceramic Art ; not a mere archaeological revival of styles 
and methods which have long since ceased to have a significance and life 
of their own.' 

Mr. Ashbee, Civic Adviser to the City of Jerusalem, also remarks : — 

' Much of the decorative work in such places as the Dome of the Rock 
consist of wonderfully glazed tiles. The secret of this work was lost and 
you can see how far the Staffordsliire people are from recovering it. There 
has only been one Enghshman who knew anj-ihing about it, and that was 
William De Morgan.' 

* The present writer has in her possession the original Persian tile 
wliich first suggested to De Morgan the idea of the wonderful colours of 
the ancient pottery — a tile circa 1400, with inch-thick Silurian earth still 
attached to the back ; and the depth of its rich, limpid colour is in no 
way distinguishable from De Morgan's reproductions. 




Bottle with Bulbous Body and Long Neck, 

painted in blue, in two shades of lustre, witli ships in a sea-fight 

Marlf, W. De Morgan, Fulham. F.P. 

Height, 23 inches. Diameter, 10 inches. 

William De Morgan fecit 

At the Victoria and Albert Museum. 



THE CHELSEA PERIOD 97 

paper to which we have been referring, one of his audience, 
Mr. Forbes Robertson, pointed out that ' Mr. De Morgan was 
an example such as one rarely met with, of a combination of 
artistic training and a scientific habit of mind ; it was for lack 
of artistic training that our craftsmen in the applied Arts had 
hitherto, in a great measure, failed to produce the artistic results 
which were so much to be desired,' while Mr. Phene Spiers 
added : — 

' He had had the pleasure of knowing Mr. De Morgan a great many 
years, and it was very seldom one met with such a combination of quaUtiea 
— with scientific training, artistic perception, and a vivid imagination, all 
of which were apparent in his productions. It was interesting to notice 
how the scientific side of his character gave him such a mastery of the 
technical part of the process : while his artistic powers gave beauty to 
the objects produced. It was very fortunate for this branch of art that 
it was taken up by a man of so many-sided a nature.' * 

The speaker at that date had little premonition of another 
strange development of De Morgan's ' many-sided nature ' which 
the years were to bring ; but there was one element in the potter's 
work wherein lay the true secret of its success, and this De Morgan 
himself did not minimize. 

' I believe,' he concluded, ' we have learnt all there is to know of the 
chemical and mechanical side of the art, as it was known to the ancients. 
What remains to be discovered in order to produce original work, equal 
to that of the Renaissance, is not a technical mystery, but the secret of 
the spirit which animated the fifteenth century not only in Italy, but all 
through Europe. We have got the materials and many more, but the 
same causes that forbid the attainment of new beauty have stood 
between us and the revival of the old beauty. . , . Some day there 
may be a new imagery and a new art,' 

And it was in a measure this ' new imagery and new art ' 
which De Morgan himself inaugurated ; for the element in his 
work which eluded all imitators — the stamp of an individual 
genius — could not be conveyed even by his generous willingness 
to share the result of his labours with other strivers. 

It is indeed the psychology of the man as an artist even 
more than the technical triumph of the potter as a craftsman 
which makes the appeal to many lovers of the things he created. 
For in that work they read so unerringly the character of 
the worker — the minghng of poetry and fantasy, of idealism, 
of inexliaustible imagination, of irrepressible humour. The 
graceful sweeping lines, the delicate curves, the intricate orna- 
mentation with which we are familiar — and in the elaboration 
Df which almost as much loving care is devoted to the back of 
a plate as to the front — are all subordinate to some idea which 

* Reprinted in the Journal of the Society of Arts, June, 1892. 

G 



98 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

seems half a jest and half a vision from the Fairy-land of child- 
hood. Goggle-eyed fish, swimming in stiff procession through 
curving waves, provide the essential foreground to some weird 
ship of ingenious construction which dominates the scene. In 
one design, a shark is rising out of the water to stare at a vessel 
the bird figure-head of which returns the gaze with an uncanny 
suggestion of consciousness. In other sea-pieces, such as he 
loved, the sea-serpent and uncouth creatures of the deep entwine 
or peer through patterned tracery accentuating the mystery of 
things marine. On a dish of different suggestion, in colouring 
like the soft haze of some ' forest primeval,' a dragon, all shimmer- 
ing azure and silver scales, sits biting his own tail amid interlacing 
purple grapes. Fantastic beasts, with an anatomy all their 
own and a sinister menace wholly convincing, are as instinct 
with life and motion as are Landseer's faithful reproductions 
from Nature itself. Prancing horses, graceful stags, charging 
bulls, fierce tigers, playful elephants, distorted into grotesque 
outline and utihzed either as a central idea or as part of a scheme 
of decoration, vie with birds of equally bizarre conception. 
Owls and vultures glow redly like a materialization of the ruddy 
flames into which the pottery was once thrust ; eagles, there 
are, every plume of which shades to a glory of changing colour ; 
peacocks, the pompous conceit of which provokes laughter ; 
storks in prim array ; ducks striding through a tangle of trailing 
foliage, with outspread wings glinting in gold and silver. Yet 
all are monsters straight from Wonderland ; all seem reminiscent 
of that little child of the Nursery Journal with his ' peten ' 
world peopled with creatures transformed from reality by the 
magic of his tiny brain. And other plates and pots might be 
cited, of which the charm is still more elusive— opalescent plates 
w^hich seem an iridescent compound of moonlight and rainbow ; 
silver plates which shade to blue ; powder-blue which shade to 
amber and mauve ; copper which glow with the radiance of 
metal, then pale like vanishing fairy gold — infinite in colour and 
design, the versatility of the master-mind which created them is 
always apparent. 

But, out of her own heritage of art and poetry, few have 
caught the true measure of De Morgan's inspiration as has Miss 
Morris. Through and beyond the mere dexterity of hand and 
ingenuity of brain, she can feel the spirit which permeates the 
whole— which to her seems to reach out from a far past and to 
stretch forward to an unfathomable future : — 

' A man's change of style, as his outer and inner self change in the 
journey through life, is always a matter to be noted. De Morgan's designs 
show types developing from the simple and occasionally naive work of the 
early Cheyne Row time to the bold mid-period with big strong masses 
enriched with smaller ornament, and thence to the later work, elaborate 



THE CHELSEA PERIOD 99 

and intricate and full of curious invention. The time when he was stud^dng 
the finest of the potter's art at its source produced some splendid echoes 
of Asia Minor and Persian types, and later, his passion for the sea expressed 
itself in patterns that have to my mind a curious relation with Mycenaean 
work. No one would call it an attempt at reproduction ; it is rather as 
if the same forms suggested the same type of ornament to inventors so 
far sundered in time and space, as though the same impulse towards sea 
things, the same passion for the twilight gardens of the deep, had moved 
the nineteenth-century craftsman and those dwellers around the Middle 
Sea. 

' Some of the decorations on the pots and vases . . . are wonderfully 
subtle both in form and colour ; two designs are specially in my mind : 
one (a pot) has a ground of green-white, on which is a lustre fish under a 
network of green-white ; another (a vase) has a pale pinkish lustre ground 
and lustre figures under a scale pattern of white. The atmospheric 
impression obtained by this plane upon plane is remarkable, and the 
simplified concentration of the symbol-drawing stimulates imagination 
and produces the feeling of reality — the vivid dream-reahsm which is 
more especially the possession of artist and poet. The deeps of the sea — 
fishes seen behind clustering sea-weed in a pale green light — are suggested 
in several of these '' plane upon plane " patterns. . . . The finest periods 
of art give us, in textiles, in ceramics and other crafts, countless examples 
of one pattern laid upon another, but I cannot at the moment recall any 
example of note in which the slighter, mechanical pattern, reversing the 
usual practice, is used as a veil for the principal design. I hope it is not 
straining a point to dwell on this feature in some of De Morgan's patterns ; 
the suggestion of an essential seen through shimmering water or other 
screen of detail ; it occurs to me as a quite unconscious expression — 
perhaps notable only to anyone on the look out for such expressions — of 
the reaching through a tangle to things that count : peering through the 
ordered pattern of trivial matters to the real life behind. This is doubtless 
reading big significance into a small decorative effort, and one is far from 
desiring the primrose by the river's brim to be anything but a primrose ; 
but as half the beliefs of long-dead races are embodied in the symbol 
drawing of their " decorative art " (to use the tiresome phrase in mere 
shorthand parlance) one may be forgiven for pausing over any indication 
that seems to link the searchings of a modern mind with the searchings 
of the ancient world. 

' The special bent of De Morgan's invention was in winding beast- 
forms and great sweeping lines round difficult shapes ; the more difficult 
the space to be filled and the more fantastic the beast -pattern, the more 
enjoyment is evident. The story told is vivid and apt . . . many an 
episode of the drama of nature has been concentrated into the symbol 
drawing, the first word, and it may be the latest, in all human decoration 
of life on tliis earth. One design for a plate he has named " Stranded 
fish," a monstrous creature taking up one-half of the circle, while the 
other is occupied by tiny men in tiny boats hurrying to secure the spoil. 
Another he labels " Sea-birds' Island," another " The Snake-eater," 
another shows a lizard dancing gaily on his tail and smiling. These and 
many others are racy jokes — and so De Morganesque in their daring and 
enjoyment ! Among the designs for tiles may be noted a splendid 
wild boar, an amazing chameleon, a serpent charming a rabbit, a 
frankly-bored leopard — a handsome beast, and a hippo shedding absurd 
giant tears. There is a spoonbill, too, trying to get its bill into a De 
Morgan pot (with a background of Chelsea Church and the factory chimneys 
of the Surrey side of the Thames). 

' The freedom of his studies for designs puts them (if I may once more 



100 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

note the comparison) on a level with the spirited drawing of Mediterranean 
ancient art. Some bird-drawings, in two sweeps of the brush, have a 
Chinese swiftness and crispness. ... In the midst of all this rich and 
varied decorative invention one comes upon pots and vases which are 
severely simple — just a fine spacing of dark and light, and a sightly dis- 
position of some plain line-and-spot bordering. They are masterly in 
their efEect of noble emphasis. 

' The colouring of this ware, with its Eastern force and depth, needs no 
description, though one may note the principal colours used, the poly- 
chromatic pieces have a magnificent dark blue, and real malachite green ; 
of course a manganese purple of that uneven " atmospheric" quaUty that 
is familiar in Eastern art ; an Indian red is used, also orange, but more 
rarely, and a pure lemon yellow ; black, of course, of different depths. 
These are the usual colours ; but to name them is to give no idea of their 
quality and arrangement — to tell how the jewel-like birds fly across a 
blue-black sky, how the palhd fish shine through green water ; how the 
turquoise and purple flowers star the wooded lawns, how the python 
glitters in his forest lair ; such is our potter's handling of incomparable 
material.' ^ 

The quotation from the above article is given at some length 
in order to convey adequately the happy manner and matter of 
it. Meanwhile, to summarize certain conclusions, two points 
may be emphasized. First, that in De Morgan's successful 
productions there is a peculiar softness combined with brilliance 
to which none of his imitators have attained. Secondly, that a 
noticeable sense of life and suppleness is characteristic of all the 
living forms which he represents, and renders them easily dis- 
tinguishable from the work of other artists by whom such types 
are utilized as a mere form of inanimate decoration. Even a 
superficial observer may remark that the most grotesque bogey 
De Morgan ever painted is alive and can boast an individuahty 
all its own 1 




Further, much has been said at all times respecting the 

* ' WUUam De Morgan.' Article in the Burlington Magazine, August 
and September, 191 7, by Miss May Morris. 



THE CHELSEA PERIOD lOl 

' secret ' of De Morgan's process ; yet, as far as he was concerned 
this ' secret ' — the outcome of experiment with pigments and 
close study extending over forty years — was one which he was 
always ready to share with fellow-workers. Only to the idle 
inquirer who believed himself about to fathom a possible source 
of wealth, did De Morgan ever turn a deaf ear. 

A story runs that one day a man of this description tried 
diplomatically to learn the process employed by De Morgan. 
' I wish you would describe to me how you first set to work ? ' 
he said. 

And De Morgan told him. 

' And what do you do next ? ' said the friend. 

Again De Morgan told him. 

' And finally ? ' asked the questioner, scarcely able to keep 
the note of triumph out of his voice. 

' Oh — finally ? ' said De Morgan with engaging ingenuous- 
ness, 'finally, you see, I just label the thing two-and-sixpence 
— and it doesn't sell ! ' 

In truth his wife that was to be, in the years that were to 
come, solved and defined the mystery which bafiled the un- 
initiated. ' The secret,' she said, in answer to a similar 
inquiry, ' is — William himself ! ' 



CHAPTER V 

THE MERTON PERIOD 

1881-1885 

IT must not be imagined from the foregoing chapter that De 
Morgan's increasing success in the manufacture of pottery 
was accompanied by any corresponding financial prosperity. 
From the humble beginning when he experimented with a 
solitary workman to aid him, to the stage when he kept a factory 
going with a number of employees and busy kilns at work, 
marked an advance due solely to his enthusiasm and energy. 
To run an experimental business such as he was doing, with no 
substratum of capital — a business, moreover, which required a 
never-ceasing outlay and weekly cash payments — was to live 
perpetually on the brink of a precipice ; and with his complete 
absence of any commercial instinct, it is only surprising that he 
so far succeeded in balancing expenditure and receipts as to be 
able to keep disaster at bay. ' It is not well organized,' he said 
once quaintly of has factory, ' it is very ill de-morganized, in 
fact ! ' and characteristic stories still survive of his method of 
dealing with prospective purchasers which are curiously reminis- 
cent of the conduct of his grandfather, William Frend, when the 
latter emptied his wine-casks in the streets of Canterbury. 

One day a millionaire arrived in the show-room at Orange 
House full of anxiety to choose some handsome pot — the more 
expensive the better. De Morgan himself wandered round with 
the would-be purchaser, pointing out some of his most successful 
achievements. Then an idea occurred to him. ' What do you 
want it for ? ' he queried. 

' I want it for a wedding present.' 

' Is it for So-and-so's wedding ? ' inquired De Morgan, naming 
a big function which was to take place the following week. 

' Yes,' was the rejoinder. 

' Oh, my dear chap,' exclaimed De Morgan with anxiety, 
' don't give the bride any more of my pots — she's inundated with 
them ! You take my advice — just go round to Mappin & Webb's 
and choose her a nice useful piece of silver. She'll like it ever 
50 much better 1 ' 

102 



THE MERTON PERIOD 103 

The prospective customer, somewhat amazed, thanked De 
Morgan for his disinterested suggestion, and hurried off to choose 
a piece of silver. 

On another occasion a man came intending to give a large 
order for some tiles with zoological designs. 

' What do you want them for ? ' asked De Morgan. 

' It is to tile my nursery,' was the reply. ' They would be 
washable and clean.' 

' Oh, if that's what you want them for,' said De Morgan, ' do 
let me advise you — my tiles, you see, would come expensive, and 
they chip very easily. Just you go to Minton — he provides a 
nice cheap tile quite good enough for your purpose, and it would 
save you no end of money ! ' 

Again a grateful customer departed — to spend his money 
elsewhere. 

Nor did De Morgan play his cards well when other opportunities 
offered. On one occasion a Royal Lady signified her gracious 
desire to inspect his pottery. Having walked through his shov/- 
room, she purchased a tile worth a pound and asked for the loan 
of a panel worth fifty, the design of which she wished to copy. 

' I would suggest,' said De Morgan firmly, ' that you first copy 
the tile you have bought, and by that time I shall know if I can 
spare the panel." 

The Princess took the hint — and her departure ; but De 
Morgan's methods sufficiently demonstrate why his succh 
d'estime was slow to assume the guise of more tangible assets. 

Nevertheless, to all who knew him, his inherent simplicity of 
character seemed as inevitable a part of a unique personality as 
were his originality of outlook and quaint, dreamy fashion of 
speech. Of the latter — enhanced by the long intervals of silence 
which had won him the name of the Mouse — it has already been 
pointed out that it is impossible to convey any adequate impres- 
sion, since the happy nonsense of his remarks, reduced to paper 
and print, loses its peculiar merriment. But the ripple of laughter 
which followed him through this grey world still finds an echo 
in the hearts of his friends. 

A few stories may be quoted at random. 

Anything peculiar in names always arrested his attention. On 
hearing one day that Mrs. Burne-Jones was going to Nettleship 
to have her eyes tested, he observed reflectively, ' I wonder how 
Nettleship likes to be addressed — " Yes, your Nettleship ! " and 
" No, your Nettleship ! " ' Another day, after an animated 
conversation had been going on around him for some time, in 
which he took no part — remaining throughout apparently 
absorbed in thought— a friend at last ventured to ask him what 
he was thinking of. All present expected to hear that he had 
been revolving some abstruse problem connected with his work, 



104 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

and his answer came as a shock : ' I was thinking,' he said 
seriously, ' how expensive it would be for a centipede if it wore 
boots ! ' 

On another occasion, watching the multitude of twittering 
sparrows disporting themselves in a London garden, he observed, 
' What a pity they can't all be inoculated with the song of 
nightingales 1 ' 

Once when he was staying in the country with his old friend 
Henry Holiday, who was now married, wandering round the hall 
he noticed an elaborate barometer hanging on the wall. In the 
centre was written, Admiral Fitzroy's remarks ; and on the left, 
' When falling ' ; on the right, ' When rising.' Suddenly, into 
the midst of the desultory conversation at the other end of the 
hall, penetrated a small thoughtful voice from the spot where 
De Morgan stood : ' I should have thought that Admiral Fitzroy's 
remarks " When falling " would have been more forcible ! ' 

During his visit, Mrs. Holiday mentioned to him several novels 
which she thought it might interest him to read ; and thinking 
afterwards that he might not remember the right titles, she sent 
him a written list. He wrote back thanking her politely for her 
kindness, but concluded blandly : ' I haven't the slightest 
intention of reading any one of the books you mention ! ' 

Another time she knitted him a scarf for his neck ; and on 
again writing to express his thanks, he remarked : ' I shall 
never now be able to say that I don't care a (w)rap about any- 
thing ! ' 

One day she was present with him at a private view of some 
pictures by Eleanor Fortescue Bi ickdale. The place was crowded, 
so that it was almost impossible to move, and smartly dressed 
people, who had ostensibly come to see the Exhibition, were 
treating it as a social function, standing about talking, devouring 
sandwiches and drinking tea, with their backs turned brazenly 
to the beautiful works upon the walls. Mrs. Holiday remarked 
upon this feature of the gathering to William De Morgan, and 
he smiled a little sadly. ' Yes,' he said, ' there is all the difference 
in the world between the elite and the elect ! ' 

On another occasion he went with her to see some new fabrics 
of artistic design which were being exhibited at Morris's. The 
shopmen gave themselves considerable airs, and behaved towards 
the two inquirers with a condescension which De Morgan resented. 
' I wish to Goodness,' he observed with unusual asperity as he 
walked away, ' that they would not treat us as if they were all 
Ptolemies ! ' 

Passing the window of a well-known shop Mrs. Holiday once 
saw there displayed some of Maw's pottery masquerading as De 
Morgan ware. Entering, she remonstrated warmly with the 
shopman upon the iniquity of trying to palm off any works of 



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THE MERTON PERIOD 105 

art upon the public under a wrong name ; but failing to con\dnce 
the man of his error, she wrote indignantly to ask De Morgan to 
interfere in the matter. ' / shan't bother ! ' he wrote back 
placidly ; ' imitation is the sincerest form of pottery ! ' 

' In the matter of riddles,' recalls Miss Hohday, ' he was quite 
without shame. A few drift across my recollection in their 
boyish foolishness. " Why is a serpent like the dome of Saint 
Paul's ? " " Because it h{is)s ! " " Why is an Archbishop cut in 
halves like a man recovering from a faint ? " " Because he's 
comin' to (two)." ' On one occasion he said he had invented an 
excellent answer but could not find a question to it. The whole 
completed ran thus : — 

' Where did Ovid meet Julia's father ? 
Ovid Methimathisorf&ces.' 

But one feature of De Morgan's conversation never imderwent 
any change in youth or age. In his presence no one was allowed 
to pursue a quarrel, and if the talk became ill-natured, he usually 
contrived to change the topic, or to rob it of its venom. On one 
occasion some people had been adversely discussing the character 
of a well-known man, and De Morgan, for a time, maintained 
silence. At length he interrupted : ' I cannot think,' he said, 
' why you are all so down on poor C. R., except ' — apologetically 
— ' that he is unmarried to a Dutch lady ! ' 

During the early part of De Morgan's career he snatched little 
time for relaxation ; nevertheless, the atmosphere of his home- 
life, with its constant influx of visitors, social, scientific and 
artistic, formed an essential part of his environment, as did the 
constant companionship of his sister Mary. 

From a brusque, clever child, the latter had grown into a 
talented woman, who amused people by her witty sayings and 
quick repartees. In appearance she was in marked contrast to 
her brother, being small and slight, with china-blue eyes and 
regular features, while her quick, sharp voice accentuated a 
somewhat abrupt manner. 

As already mentioned, De Morgan, in 1877, illustrated a book 
of Fairy Tales published by her, entitled On a Pincushion. She 
afterwards published The Necklace of Princess Fiorimonde, 
illustrated by Walter Crane, and other children's books, the last 
of which, The Wind Fairies, published in 1900, was dedicated 
to Angela, Dennis and Clare Mackail, the grandchildren of 
Bume- Jones. In 1887 she also brought out anonymously a 
striking novel of which her brother suggested the title — A Choice 
of Chance. It is an intricate and unusual plot, well told, and 
with the interest cleverly sustained throughout ; but unfortu- 



io6 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

nately she published it under the pseudonym ' William Dobson,' 
adopting the surname of her grandfather's family, and thus 
sacrificing much of the interest which would have attached to it 
had she sent it out into the world under her own name. Un- 
reasonably disappointed at its reception, she never wrote another ; 
but the gift of story-telling was evidently in the family ; and 
Sophia De Morgan, whose realistic and graphic writing has 
already been remarked, was herself the author of a work of 
fiction which she never published. William, on the contrary, at 
this date never wrote anything except a few desultory verses 
scribbled in jest. All the accounts later promulgated respecting 
early manuscripts written by him and destroyed are entirely 
without foundation. 

Besides her gift of penmanship, Mary De Morgan was accredited 
with a remarkable power of fortune-telling which she used to 
exercise for the private amusement of her friends. While her 
brother was still at 40 Fitzroy Square, Miss Laura Hertford, 
who occupied the upper part of the house, gave a party to about 
a dozen people, at which were present Mary and Annie De Morgan, 
with William, and Mr. Sandwick, who relates the following stories : 

Meeting Mary for the first time on this occasion, he had his 
hand told by her, and on seeing it she exclaimed : ' But you 
ought not to be here ! Your Line of Life is broken just before 
this date ! However, as you arc here, it must indicate that you 
have recently had a most narrow squeak of your life. ' ' This 
was true,' testifies Mr. Sandwick ; ' about six months before my 
doctor had given me up, with a possible four-and-twenty hours 
to live ! ' 

At the same party a more remarkable incident occurred. 
Mary was asked to ' tell ' the hand of a house surgeon from 
University College Hospital, and while glibly predicting his fate, 
she paused abruptly and refused to say more. After he was 
gone, her friends, feeling convinced from her manner that she 
had deliberately left untold something she had seen, begged her 
to say what this was. ' I saw that he dies from drowning,' she 
said, ' and that his fiancee is also drowned by the capsizing of a 
boat at sea, w^iich he will witness from the shore.' Little over 
a year after both events occurred ; and the man was drowned at 
the same spot as the girl to whom he was engaged. 

Another time, however, when she was telling fortunes at a 
bazaar, a stranger came to have his hand read. Mary foretold 
him a future full of picturesque incidents, one of these being that 
he would go to another country, and would there meet with a 
carriage accident, in consequence of which he would fall in love 
with, and marry, a girl whom he would rescue from beneath the 
horses' hoofs. Years afterwards a man whom she did not recog- 
nize came up to Mary at a party and introduced himself. ' I 



THE MERTON PERIOD 107 

have always wanted to meet you again,' he said. 'Long ago 
you told my fortune with an amount of detail. It all came true ! 
I went to India, I there met with a carriage accident ; I rescued 
a girl from beneath the horses' hoofs, and I married her. Every- 
thing else that you told me has happened.' ' I suppose,' said 
Mary De Morgan, ' that you will not believe me if I tell you that, 
at that time I knew nothing about palmistry — I hadn't studied 
it at all — but my friends bullied me to help them, and as it was 
for charity, I did it. Everything that I told you was just chance 
— I made it up out of my head as I went along ! ' ' Then if you 
weren't a palmist, you are clairvoyante ! ' exclaimed the man, 
unconvinced ; ' it could not be mere coincidence.' 

The younger generation of De Morgans had carried on the 
tradition started by their parents, and were greatly interested in 
uncanny occurrences and psychical research. They did not, 
however, regard such investigations with the profound seriousness 
exhibited by their mother, and indeed they inherited from their 
father an absence of bias and a keen sense of humour in which she 
was perhaps lacking. It says much, therefore, for the perfect 
harmony existing between her and her son that she did not 
resent the frivolity with which he occasionally treated what to 
her were matters of the utmost gravity. 

On one occasion she returned from a walk greatly perturbed. 
' I have been in Battersea Park, ' she announced to a casual 
visitor ominously, ' and I had a terrible shock — I came face 
to face with William's wraith ! ' 

' Just one of Ma's Bogies ! ' explained William in his high 
falsetto. 

On another occasion she was describing how, in a particular 
alley in the neighbourhood, passers-by after dark complained 
that things were hurled at them from over a high wall ' by evil 
spirits. ' ' Why not by some grubby little boy ? ' queried William, 
at once effectually disposing of undue interest in the phenomena. 

In like manner Mary occasionally made jest of matters which 
to her mother were entirely convincing. In one instance when 
the subject of Spiritualism was under discussion in a room full 
of earnest believers, all profoundly impressed with their individual 
experiences, she threw her evidence into the opposite scale with 
a decisiveness which descended upon her audience with the effect 
of a bomb-shell. ' I was at a seance lately, ' she announced in her 
clear, penetrating voice, ' and there were seven people present. 
Each of them had recently lost a relation, and they had come to 
communicate with the deceased. There was a materialization, 
and each of the seven persons at once recognized it to be the 
relation he or she had lost. They all began to quarrel when any- 
one else claimed it, and in the end all became violently abusive. 
/ saw in it only the medium dressed up I ' 



io8 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

At that date, however, there was a great mania for all 
Spiritualistic phenomena. Table-turning, introduced from 
America circa 185^ and at first a subject of ridicule, had since 
become a fashionable pastime in which beUevers and unbelievers 
ahke dabbled for their entertainment so that the craze for 
seances was universal. 

While living in Cheyne Row, the De Morgans had for many 
years a young servant who exliibited peculiar mediumistic 
powers, and who was much in request at their experiments in 
this cormexion. Anxious to avoid all possible chance of trickery, 
William once jestingly begged the 'spirits' to transfer the 
rapping from the table at which they were seated to a cupboard 
on the other side of the room. This promptly took place, all 
subsequent raps sounding loudly from that isolated article of 
furniture. It may be added that the servant-girl in question 
died of consumption at the age of twenty-seven, and for three 
years before her death all mediumship deserted her ; although she 
was on one occasion offered ten pounds by a visitor to exhibit 
her former powers, she was entirely unable to do so. 

Apart from her Spiritualistic investigations, Sophia De Morgan 
was much interested in mesmerism, which she practised as a 
healing factor, and respecting which she relates the following : — 

' About the year 18^9, or earlier, I mesmerized a girl of eleven- 
and-a-half years old for fits, which she had had from birth. Her 
mother was epileptic ; but I have no medical statement of the 
nature of the girl's complaint. She was very ignorant and 
stupid, never having been able to learn, owing to her bad health, 
The mother was a poor char-woman or laundress, also stupid, 
but honest. 

' The girl became clairvoyante soon after the treatment began ; 
but her lucidity was very uncertain. I never had reason to 
believe in its occurrence except on five or six occasions, on five 
of which it was so thoroughly proved that imposture was out of 
the question. I mean that she saw and reported things of which 
it was impossible for her to have obtained any knowledge m her 
normal state. . . . She had also the faculty of mental traveUing, 
which she showed plainly at least four times. 

' The girl became very ill after the treatment had gone on for 
a few weeks ; and not knowing how to proceed, I wrote to Dr. 
Elleston, describing the case and her symptoms, and asking his 
advice. He told me to persevere without fear, as it was probably 
a crisis and would end in recovery. I went on accordingly, until, 
a day or two after, a discharge of water from the head com- 
pletely relieved her, and she had no more fits. She entirely lost 
her susceptibility to Mesmerism after this time. 

' I also mesmerized a woman who was pronounced incurable 
by Mr. R. Quain and other University College doctors, (Mr. 



THE MERTON PERIOD 109 

Quain's words to my husband were, " The woman must die.") 
She was cured in about three months. She became perfectly rigid 
after a few passes, and I could then hang a 12 lb, weight for some 
minutes on her extended arm.' 

These experiments took place when William was a small boy ; 
but in 1877, Dr. Carpenter, in his famous book on Mesmerism, 
spiritualism, etc., gave a misleading account of the proceedings 
and particularly of the Professor's attitude towards them. 
William forthwith, in a spirited correspondence, convicted Dr. 
Carpenter of error, and forced him to retract, and apologize for, 
his misstatements. 

In 1882, Sophia De Morgan published a Memoir of her 
husband ; and previous to its appearance William found himself 
again involved in an unexpected controversy. Throughout his 
life, one of his abiding characteristics remained an unwavering 
devotion to, and admiration of, his father ; finding therefore the 
accuracy of the latter called in question, he once more took 
up the cudgels in defence of the Professor's memory. 

On November 5, 1864, Augustus De Morgan had reviewed in 
the AthcncBum Herbert Spencer's Principles of Biology, treating 
the work with less deference than the author held to be its due. 
Seeing that the Professor had omitted to quote in full his 
' proximate definition of Life,' Spencer, in his Study of Sociology, 
drew attention to the fact, sharply criticizing ' the perversity of 
Professor De Morgan's judgments ' and his ' recklessness of 
misrepresentation.' Those who wish to study a fair statement 
of both sides of the controversy can refer to the Memoir of 
Augustus De Morgan, where, on page 162, they will find the case 
set forth clearly by William De Morgan for insertion in his 
mother's book ; but the duel which ensued privately between 
himself and the angry philosopher would fill a bulky pamphlet. 
Spencer at last consented to remove the ofiending passage on 
the following terms : — 

' . . . as I do not wish to give needless pain to any member of the late 
Professor De Morgan's family, I will, in an edition now going through the 
press, omit that part to which you refer. 

' In the small edition, however, which is stereotyped, all I can do is to 
alter the plate, and replace tliis passage by a less specific statement — one 
in which Prof. De Morgan's defect of judgment is commented upon in 
general terms. That he was prone to direct a microscopic attention to 
some one element of a question, and, while so doing, to ignore other 
elements l>4ng around, is a fact which not I only have observed, but wliich 
I have heard remarked by sundry others. Much injustice, I doubt not 
quite unintentional, has, in his criticisms, resulted from this peculiarity.' 

William De Morgan to Herbert Spencer. 

' June 8, 1880. 
' I am quite convinced that you would not willingly give pain to 
anyone — but the doctrine that the feelings of survivors ought to be spaired 



no WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

would interfere so seriously with free criticism of the works of deceaapd 
authors, that I for one should never urge it nor be a party to its adoption. 
Better apply the knife freely and when the constitution of the patient 
begins to suffer, it will be time to talk of sparing the feelings of bystanders. 

' Your criticism of my father seems to me in some respects far from 
an uitfair one as it now stands. But I should contend that it amounted 
to no more than this — that he was occasionally one-sided. I have noticed 
in the controversies in which he engaged that there was an appearance 
(to the uninitiated) that other parties were othersided. 

' Perhaps if I were obliged to say exactly what my own experience of 
his method was, I should say that (when the choice lay between two such 
alternatives) he preferred to take a direct view of one side of a p}Tamid 
to the exclusion of the other three, rather than to place his eye at the 
apex, and so get an imperfect view of the three sides to the exclusion of 
the fourth — which is certainly not an uncommon way. But in matters 
where he was closely concerned, I tliink he was just as likely as others to 
walk all round the pj'^ramid. 

' As to his accuracy of quotation, I should never feel any misgiving 
whatever, in any sense short of ascribing to him infallibility.' 

Over a year later De Morgan returned to the attack and drew 
frorji Spencer a letter which is of interest as it contains what he 
emphatically states to be his final definition of Life. 

William De Morgan to Herbert Spencer. 

' September 3, 1881. 

' May I trouble you with an inquiry relating to the subject of our 
correspondence of last June twelvemonth. 

' You will remember that the matter in question was a misquotation 
imputed by you to my father, the late Professor De Morgan. 

' I wish to ascertain from you whether you called his attention at the 
time by letter or otherwise to the misapprehension contained in his review ? 

' I have not seen the more recent edition of your work but I presume 
it is out, and contains the note you were so good as to forward me in 
proof. 

' I believe I have your final definition of Life accurately in my memory, 
but lest I should have wTongly accepted (as such) another proximate 
definition, will note it here, and perhaps you will kindly correct me if I 
am mistaken. — " The continuous adjustment of internal relations to external 
rslations." I trouble you on these points as I shall probably have an 
opportunity of touching on the subject in a forthcoming Memoir by my 
mother.' 

Herbert Spencer to William De Morgan. 

' September 20, 1881. 
• Sir.— 

' I have delayed rephnng to your note of September 3, because 
absence in the country, where I had no means of access to the Principles 
of Biology, prevented me from giving the exact words of the definition. 

' It is well that you have, as you explain, taken the precaution of 
ascertaining whether you were right in suppo.sing that the definition 
which you quote is the final one, since you would have, in another way, 
misrepresented the facts, had you quoted it without explanation. The 
definition which you quote, though it is one that I have finally given as a 



THE MERTON PERIOD iii 

brief and abstract form of the definition previously arrived at, and one 
which might be conveniently used for certain purposes, is nevertheless 
not the one which I decided upon as most specific and fitted for most 
general use. I have said that " so abstract a formula as tliis is scarcely 
fitted for our present purpose, and that its terms are to be reserved for 
such use as occasion may dictate." The definition which I have dis- 
tinctly chosen for habitual use runs thus — Life is " the definite combina- 
tion of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive, in 
correspondence with external co-existence and sequences.''' It is the last 
clause, here marked in italics, which was omitted in the proximate defini- 
tion quoted by your father, and the absence of which makes all the differ- 
ence in the meaning. 

' Faithfully yours, 

' Herbert Spencer.' 

Some years afterwards, De Morgan had occasion to call on 
Herbert Spencer, and the interview was amicable on both sides, 
Spencer was at that time boarding in the house in Bayswater 
kept by three old ladies who, amongst his friends, went irrev- 
erently by the name of his harem. On his first taking up his 
residence with them, they considered it necessary to entertain 
him, and one of them laboriously set to work to enliven him with 
polite conversation. Spencer bore it with commendable patience 
for a space ; but at last, interrupting the flow of platitudes, he 
observed pointedly, ' Madam, I am thinking how particularly 
well you would look seated under that tree in the garden yonder ! ' 
The lady took the hint and left the philosopher to ruminate at his 
own sweet will. 

Not long afterwards a friend of De Morgan's remarked to 
Spencer facetiously, ' I hear that you have now a regular harem ' 
[pronouncing this hare-em]. 

' I have nothing of the sort ! ' responded Spencer cantanker- 
ously. 

' But De Morgan tells me that you yourself said so ! ' 

' I said nothing of the kind ! ' reiterated Spencer caustically. 
' What / said I had was a har-reem ! ' 

But Spencer was not the only churlish philosopher with 
whom De Morgan crossed lances. He used often to go for walks 
with his neighbour, Thomas Carlyle, on which occasions he found 
great difficulty in understanding what that tactiturn companion 
was saying, when at intervals he launched into conversation, so 
broad was his Scottish accent. On account of this known 
intimacy with the great man, De Morgan was deputed to invade; 
him with a view to enlisting his sympathy in a scheme evolved 
by William Morris. 

For long, Morris had seen and lamented the ruthless re- 
construction, or rather destruction, of many national treasures 
of aichitecture and irreplaceable landmarks of history, while 
none had power to stay the hands of ignorant vandalism. This 



Iia WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

was an evil which he reahzed could only be combated by some 
organized and permanent body which could make its influence 
feUt, and he therefore inaugurated a ' Society for the Protection 
of Ancient Buildings,' privately nicknamed by him ' The Anti- 
scrape.' He pressed De Morgan into the service, and one of the 
first undertakings which the latter was asked to tackle was to 
secure the coveted name of Carlyle as a member of the newly- 
fledged association. De Morgan set about his unwelcome task 
conscientiously, but with trepidation ; and many years after- 
wards, for the benefit of Mr. Mackail, the son-in-law of Bume- 
Jones, he thus recorded his experiences : — 

'. . . Just at the starting of the Society, Morris asked me to 
propose to Carlyle to become a member — I sent the prospectus 
to Carlyle through his niece, Miss Aitken, and afterwards called 
by appointment to elucidate further. The philosopher didn't 
seem in the mood to join anything — in fact it seemed to me that 
the application was going to be fruitless, but fortunately Sir 
James Stephen was there when I called, and Carlyle passed me 
on to him with the suggestion that I had better make him a 
convert first. However, Sir J. declined to be converted on the 
grounds that the owners or guardians of ancient buildings had 
more interest than anyone else in preserving them, and would do 
it, and so forth. I replied with a case to the contrary, that of 
Wren's churches and the Ecclesiastical Commissions. This 
brought Carlyle out with a panegyric of Wren, who was, he said, 
a really great man ' of extraordinary patience with fools,' and he 
glared round at the company reproachfully. However, he 
promised to think it over, chiefly, I think, because Sir J. F. S. had 
rather implied that the Society's object was not worth thinking 
over. He added one or two severe comments on the contents 
of space. I heard from his niece next day that he was wavering, 
and that a letter from Morris might have a good effect. I asked 
for one and received the following : — 

' HoRRiNGTON House, April 3. 
' My DEAR De Morgan, — ^ 

' I should be sorry indeed to force Mr. Carlyle' s inclinations on the 
matter in question ; but if you are seeing him I think you might point out 
to him that it is not only artists or students of art that we are appealing 
to, but thoughtful people in general. For the rest it seems to me not so 
much a question whether we are to have old buildings or not, as whether 
they are to be old or sham old ; at the lowest I want to make people see 
that it would surely be better to wait while architecture and the arts in 
general are in their present experimental condition before doing what 
can never be undone, and may at least be ruinous to what it intends to 
preserve. 

' Yours very truly, 

' William Morris.' 

The gist of what follows lies in the fact that Morris's prejudice 



THE MERTON PERIOD 113 

against the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was carried to 
a pitch of unreasonableness. The works of Wren and his suc- 
cessors were anathema to him ; wherefore his feehngs at one 
result of De Morgan's mission — and the manner in which his 
friends rejoiced at those feelings — may be dimly imagined. 

' Next day,' continues De Morgan, ' I received from Miss 
Aitken a letter from Carlyle to the Society accepting membership. 
It made special allusion to Wren, and spoke of his city churches 
as marvellous works, the like of which we shall never see again, or 
nearly that. Morris had to read this at the first public meeting, 
you may imagine that he did not relish it, and one heard it in the 
way he read it — I fancy he added mentally, and a good job too ! ' 

At the date of this letter, Mr. Mackail was collecting material 
for his Life of Morris, and De Morgan, then casting his mind back 
through a somewhat hazy past, was distressed to find that, out 
of the accumulated reminiscences of a lifetime, only trivial 
incidents concerning his early friendship with Morris still clung 
to his memory. 

' I have a good deal of difficulty,' he continues, ' in recalling 
how much or how little I knew Morris before this date, which was, 
I suppose, '76. I first saw him in Red Lion Square . . . and I 
cannot reconcile it with reason that I knew him for ten years after 
that, and can recall nothing (by effort, at the moment — there's 
no knowing what may turn up), all through that period ! Any- 
how, memory is blank until the foundation of the Ancient Build- 
ings, when I went to the first meeting at Q. Square. He asked 
me to come over to Horrington House, and one afternoon I went, 
and I remember he said plenty worth remembering, but — can't 
recollect what — indeed, I only recall that he denounced a beastly 
tin-kettle of a bell in a chapel close by, which, he said, went 
wank, wank, wank, until he was nearly driven mad. After that 
I saw him oftener, as I was a punctual, though useless, committee 
man at the A.B. . . . 

' Reading through the foregoing has reminded me of once 
when I came in at Merton, and found him at work on a large 
drawing for a woven stuff, that conversation led to my remarking 
that I didn't know when he found time to write Epic poems, on 
which he said, " Oh, of course I make them while I'm doing this 
sort of work. A chap ought to be able to make an Epic and do 
this sort of work at the same time — of course ! " I don't think 
he was altogether joking, but meant that he found the ornamental 
designing come easy. 

' I've another little scrap of his writing that is pre-Mertonian. 
It's an acrostic on a post card, and belongs to the political period 
of 1879, and the meeting at St. James's Hall.' 

At that date Morris had been swept into politics by his burning 
indignation against an epidemic of revolting barbarism. The 

H 



114 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

collapse of the Turkish Government in its European provinces 
during the year 1876 had been accompanied by massacres and 
torture on a hideous scale in Bulgaria, and the news of this in 
England although at first treated with apathy, gradually, as the 
facts became more fully realized, roused an overwhelming storm 
of protest and horror. Into all work connected with the Eastern 
Question Morris flung himself heart and soul, and his first 
plunge into the political arena was succeeded by a vigorous 
political campaign as treasurer of the National Liberal League. 
De jMorgan writes to Mackail : — 

' The anti-Turk Crusade, and the St. James's Hall meetings 
having landed Morris in politics (leastways I never heard anything 
of his politicalizing before then), an atmosphere of politics rankled 
in previously peaceful quarters, and all our souls were rent with 
a powerful hatred of Tories — Tories were our hetes noires in them 
days, and in 1880 we rushed to the poll. My own feelings took 
the form of Acrostics, and sim'lar — I rather think your daughter 
Angela's grandpa has one which expresses my faith that by elect- 
ing Sir Charles Dilke for Chelsea the millennium will come all the 
quicker. He keeps it among his testimonials to Baronets, to 
gratify his class prejudices — I have one from him on the word 
Dilke, of which the fourth line is — ' Kum to grub at seven- 
thirty,' and I have one (which is what I am driving at) from 
Morris as follows : — 

Election Day, 1880. 

■ How sweet the never-failing Spring conies round, 
Up comes the svm we thought the sea had drown' d 
Rending the clouds that darkened England's heart. 
Right tears the veil of stealthy Wrong apart. 
And we, long-worn, long faithful, glad of face, 
Hoist the torn banner to its ancient place . . . 
That's the first part — Hurrah — I will do the rest if I can — Gladstone fat 
Middlesex ! ' 

' This is written on a post card. He never did the rest. I 
recoUect going to some other political meeting where some capital 
verses he had written for the purpose were sung by an audience 
chiefly of working men. The rendering was not equal to the 
verses. ' 

During this General Election in 1880, when Sir Charles Dilke 
and the historian Firth were standing for the same constituency, 
Burne- Jones, Morris and De Morgan bombarded each other with 
post cards represent 'ng electioneering propaganda, many of these 
taking the form of acrostics and one from Philip Burne- Jones 
being ingeniously planned so that the commencement of the line* 
spells Dilke, and their conclusion Firth. To this De Morgan 
replied, also on a post card : — 



THE MERTON PERIOD 



"5 



^ Never vote for Inverarie 
Out upon him — he's a Tory ; 
Similar, don't vote for Brown 
He's an adjective and noun ! 
But would you flood the land with milk 
And honey, back the Bart. — " Sir Dilke '* 9 
Likewise, although he's got no Sir, th 
E candidate whose name is FIRTH. 
Having thus released Literature from the absurd shackles into which she 
appeared to be drifting, I remain Liberally your aff. D.M. 

In another mood of irresponsible nonsense De Morgan wrote 
a communication in prose to Burne- Jones on three post cards, all 
posted the same day, and of which the sequence is indicated by 
the number of E's employed in the initial which represents Burne- 
Jones's Christian name: — 

1st post card. 

E. BuR.vE-JoNES, Esq. 



Quoth Benjamin Disraeli — ' 


Well f 






It's 


no use looking glum ! 








Impt 


zrium has gone to Hell 








And 


Libertas has come ' 










(but he looks ver^ 


glum 


nevertheless 


— pulse 




720,000, and no pi 


umpers 


!) 






Did you forge 


a very 


pretty acrostic on 1 




Hurrah, and try to 


pass it off on me as 


though 




it were by W — 11 — 


-m. 







2nd post card. 

E. E. BuRNE-JoNES, Esq. 



M — rr — s of Emperor's Square, Bloomsbury ? It's 
very well done if you did. Now I'll tell you an election 
story. I went into a Pub : and addressed the owner — 
' Sir,' I said, ' I hear that Firth is in as well as Dilke — 
lo paean I ' This I spake in the exuberance of my 
spirits. But the Publican replied — ' Ah ! and / 'ope 'e 
aint ! That's where you and I differ.' 



^rd post card. 

E. E. E. BuRNE-JoNES, Esq. 



But I am aware that I am becoming prolix — - 

Your aff. D.M. 

Comink to-morrow evg. 



ii6 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

The result of the Election was a triumph for the Gladstone 
Government, and the shower of post cards between the friends 
ceased with one of mock-sympathy from Burne- Jones urging De 
Morgan to inquire after ' poor Beaconsfield — could you go round 
and ask how he is this morning — they say he has passed a very 
bad night and I am anxious ! ' 

' I, of course,' relates De Morgan, ' followed Morris's lead 
enthusiastically, and had he gone that way, should have attended 
Tory meetings to denounce Liberalism. But I was rather dis- 
concerted when I found that an honest objection to Bulgarian 
atrocities had been held to be one and the same thing as sympathy 
with Karl Marx, * and that Morris took it for granted that I should 
be ready for enrolment with Hyndman and Co. ! — I wasn't, and 
I remember telling him so, when he remarked that I wasn't a 
Radical. I said I was, according to my definition of the word. 
He said mine was wrong, and that the proper definition of the 
word " Radical " was a person opposed to the existing order of 
things. I said, very well then, I wasn't a Radical, and so we had 
it, up and down. 

' I wish I could remember all the battles we had over politics. 
We always ended in a laugh. He said he knew I was a Tory at 
heart, and gave me a pinch of snuff — Naturally, he did not take 
me seriously. I have a dim recollection of a discussion on 
Socialism which ended in a scheme for the complete Reconstruc- 
tion of Society exactly as it is now — so as to meet the views of 
both Revolutionaries and Conservatives. However, this was in 
the earlier days of Socialism — as he got more engrossed in the 
subject this sort of chat became less and less possible, and for 
many years I don't recollect politics being broached when I was 
at his home. I didn't take pains to go there when I knew there 
were certain Socialists about, as I never found (being at heart a 
bigot, don't you see ? ) that their personal charms were sufficient 
to make up for their holding opinions diametrically opposed to 
my own on every possible subject. Given this last condition to 
be unavoidable, in one's associates, I prefer Primrose Dames to 
Socialists.' 

The energetic socialistic propaganda of Morris and his 
vehement denunciation of everything bourgeois, were a fruitful 
source of jest on the part of his friends ; and the following 
fragment was sent by De Morgan to Burne- Jones : — 

• The founder of international socialism, 1 818-1864.] 



THE MERTON PERIOD 117 

♦ William De Morgan, 

36 Great Cheyne Row, Chelsea, S.W. 
And Stone Cottage Pottery, 
Merton Abbey. 
' What a beautiful poem Orator Prig is — it isn't half appreciated ! " 



' i asked of my Socialist, Orator Jaw 
What's your first observation ? He answered " bourgeois.** 

' And what is your second ? He responded " O Law 
It's identical, similar, likewise bourgeois.'^ 

• And what is your third ? He replied "To be sure 
It's as follows, to wit, videlicet, bourgeois 1 " 

' And what is your fourth ? He proceeded to pour 
Over tomes of statistics, then answered " bourgeois ! " 

' And what is your fifth ? He considered some more 
And paused for refreshments, then answered " bourgeois V* 

' And what is your sixth ? " As I mentioned before 
It is," he replied, " (to speak briefly) — bourgeois'^ 

' And what is your seventh ? He said " Lest you draw 
Wrong conclusions from silence, I'll say it's bourgeois.'* 

' And what is your eighth ? — " A surprise is in store 
For you now ! Do not start if I say it's bourgeois ! '* 

8888888 8» 
* Go on, and do a little more — Fni tired.'' 

Profoundly as De Morgan appreciated the genius and the 
greatness of Morris, it seems possible that he and his friends at 
this date did not enter into the true inwardness of ' Top's 
Socialism ' — the large, tender heart of the man which made the 
recognition of preventable suffering a sheer agony to him, and 
drove him — with the bruised soul of a poet and the yearnings of 
an idealist — to confront, and court, all that was antagonistic to 
his own temperament — the sordid things of life, the ugly, and the 
terrible. De Morgan more aptly summed up the spirit of this 
crusade in later years. ' Top chose to call his religion " Socialism" '; 
but for himself, when asked if he were a socialist, De Morgan 
replied : — ' First tell me what is a socialist, and then I can tell 
you if I am one.' In like manner, in regard to the various riddles 
of this life and the next which he reviewed in a spirit of investi- 
gation, his attitude was invariably that of the man who — to use 
his own metaphor — walks all round the pyramid and eyes it 
from different angles — laughing, meanwhile, in the Sunshine and 

^ The figure 8 is drawn in various attitudes which convey an impression 
of extreme exhaustion. 



ii8 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

not dwelling with too great insistence on the spaces of Shadow* 
since he understands that all may be seen, one day, in far other 
perspective from the apex. It was De Morgan's role to weigh 
and balance inferences, not to dictate conclusions ; and it is to 
be remarked, when considering the many problems on which he 
loved to dwell, how rarely he was ever betrayed into a definite 
or dogmatic pronouncement on any one. 

In 1871 Morris had purchased beautiful old Kelmscott 
Manor, on the borders of Oxfordshire, a house which seemed 
to breathe a mingled atmosphere of poetry and romance, with 
its grey gables and mullioned windows, its old-world garden of 
yew hedges, roses and lavender, and its environment of emerald 
river-side meadows where one could fancy Lancelot cantering 
past, watched by the mystic Lady of Shalott. There, annually, 
De Morgan visited him, snatching a brief respite from the toil and 
stress of London, through golden summer days of idleness and 
rest. 'The height of expectant enjoyment was reached,' relates 
Miss Morris, ' when my father wrote to say I am coming on such 
a day, and bringing De Morgan with me. . . . Our friend on a 
holiday was full of quips and drolleries and ingenious riddles, all 
told in that thin high drawl, with a sort of vibration in it that was 
nearly but not quite a laugh, and that indicated enjoyment of his 
company and of his own conceit. It was good to listen to. Some 
of his jokes took the form of doggerel verse, some were swift 
sketches, expressive and prettily drawn. In those days he could 
scarcely write a letter without clothing what he had to say in 
some form of oddity.' 

Among the few surviving relics of those dead summers is the 
following addressed by De Morgan to Morris : — 

Self-Restraint 

WTien the Gnat at eventide 

Rises from the marshy sedge. 
Then the Poet, pensive-eyed. 

Lingers by the streamlet's edge. 

Overhead the fluttering Bat 

Circles, while the convent-bells 
Call to vespers ; then the Gnat 

Bites the Poet, and it swells. 

Then in sympathetic mood 

Whispers thus the opening rose :^ 

' Nothing does it any good — 
Wait with patience till it goes.* 

Readers likely to be bit, 

Mark the moral of my verse I 
If the Poet scratches it, 

He is sure to make it worse. 



THE MERTON PERIOD 



119 






ir 




i//^/X^ Aj^iM 




Seven years after the purchase of the old Manor House, 
Morris told De Morgan that he had found a house which he was 
going to buy in London and they went together to look at it. 
It was called ' The Retreat,' a good solid Georgian building, 
situated in the Upper Mall, Hammersmith, with only a narrow 
roadway bordered by elms between it and the Thames. It had 
recently been vacated by Dr. George Macdonald, the author, and 
when De Morgan first saw it, the decoration of the principal rooms 
consisted of red flock paper covered by long book-cases, painted 
black, and a ceiling of azure blue, dotted with gilt stars, con- 
siderably tarnished. Needless to say, Morris soon changed its 
appearance ; and the name, which he said reminded him of a 
private asylum, he altered to Kelmscott House, after his other 
home on the banks of the river. 

' The hundred and thirty miles of stream between the two 
houses were a real, as well as an imaginative, link between them,' 
relates Mr. Mackail. ' He liked to think that the water which 



I20 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

ran under his windows at Hammersmith had passed the meadows 
and grey gables of Kehnscott ; and more than once a party oi 
summer voyagers went from one house to the other by water, 
embarking at their own door in London and disembarking in 
their own meadow at Kelmscott.' 

A Log, hitherto unpubhshed, exists of the first of these 
memorable journeys undertaken in the Ark, a little houseboat, 
which Morris describes as ' odd and delightful ' ; and in which, 
besides the host, his wife and two daughters, the crew consisted 
of ' Crom ' Price, the Hon. Richard C. Grosvenor and ' Me — 
organ,' as little Margaret Burne- Jones had named De Morgan. 
The summary of their daily doings therein recorded is interspersed 
by individual comments thereon, inserted in the margin. 

They started from Hammersmith at 3 p.m. on August 10, 
1880, and were rowed to Kew by two men supplied by Biffen, the 
owner of the Ark. ( Biffen's men,' comments William Morris, 
* one a hoy, the other a had case of chronic alcoholic poisoning, his 
eyes were gogglesome, prohahly because of grog.') At Kew they 
were made fast to a barge and ' towed by a mercantile tin 
kettle ' as far as Twickenham ; later a man and pony from Oxford 
towed them from the bank. At Molesey Lock, reached by 
twilight, William Morris ' made an effort to light the party by 
means of a candle-lamp with a spring in it,' but unluckily the 
spring slipped, and the candle shot like a rocket into the lock, 
whereupon the vehemence of Morns's expletives ' gave undis- 
guised delight to various parties in pleasure boats ranged along 
the side of the lock,' On the next occasion when Morris gave 
vent to a D ' big enough to be recorded,' there is a compre- 
hensive note by the log-keeper : ' This narrative may, and should 
he, filled up at frequent intervals with such expletives as may seem 
to fit the occasion without fear of corrupting the text, or in any way 
leaning towards exaggeration of the facts.' [Further Note by W. M., 
' Well ! well ! well ! ') 

They reached Sunbury at 10.15 p.m. (' Curious and rather 
pleasant,' notes Wilham Morris, ' muddling one's way across to 
the Inn in the dark !) — where, on arrival, — 

' W.M. exclaimed, " What a stink ! " The waiter rephed, " It is 
nothing, sir, I assure you." R. C. G. inquisitively, " Is it a sewer ? " 
Waiter in answer, " Yes, sir, quite sure." (Note by R. C. G. : After this 
unfortunate jeu d'esprit some of the males of the party seemed to think 
that they were entitled to indulge in the most abominable puns for the 
whole of the rest of the journey.) Note by our Communist : " A mountain 
before a plain ; a plain before a suburb ; a suburb before a dust-heap ; a 
dust-heap before a sewer ; but a sewer before a gentleman' s house.'' ' 

Entries follow of days in the open air, when De Morgan 
dragged the mak members of the party out of bed ' miserable 
but helpless ' for a bathe in the early dawn ; of the catching of 




§ - -; -^ 

? Q b: ^ 

-, "£ o 

S S S 1 

O ■- K ° 

ti; ^ O .g 

^ . K o 

^ .„ « 



THE MERTON PERIOD 121 

fish by R.C.G., 'later incorporated into the system of the fisher' \ 
of food prepared by Morris — his cuhnary genius is a matter of 
history — meals which ' filled the company with satisfaction and 
excellent provisions ' : of ' Price appointed boteler by acclama- 
tion (his own),' and how he later regaled the company ' with an 
entertainment gratis with an umbrella, a shawl and a champagne 
bottle ' ; of teas partaken on the bank in a golden sunset ; of 
the aurora borealis seen once in great beauty over the shimmering 
river ; of nights spent by some of the party on board the Ark, by 
others at a river-side inn, concerning which occurs on one occasion 
the pathetic but reticent note by R. C. G., 'Domestic Insects.' 
Of one evening when, to the dismay of the merry Bohemian crew, 
they suddenly found themselves and their queer craft in the 
middle of a fashionable regatta at Henley, where they created no 
small stir. ' The Ark was sculled majestically by De Morgan 
through a crowd of inferior crafj: and passed under the bridge 
not without dignity, amidst considerable excitement. . . . Hove 
to above the bridge, party still rather flustered owing to passing 
through the regatta.' And there were other graphic entries : — 

' Towed on safely to Hamblcdon Lock. Great indignation of Lock 
Keeper Mrs. Lomax (a widow with a growing family) because the party 
refused to pay is. bd. for the Ark and 3^^. for the Albert ; tearing up of 
receipt for 3<i. by Mrs. Lomax ; emphatic denunciation by W. M. of 
Thames Conservancy ; offer by Price to undertake paternal relation 
towards the Lomax children. . . . 

' ^iiss Macleod took a baby on board the Ark ; Price offered to adopt 
it and was for feeding it on the spot with honey out of a spoon. 

' Towed on to War grave, here the Ark ran aground on a mud bank ; 
all the males of the party gave conflicting orders in loud tones ; eventually 
De Morgan [characteristically] restored order and happiness by taking off 
his boots and socks, stepping into the mud and pushing her off. . . . 

' Towed on to Caversham, W. M. and D. M. discussing the inequalities 
and injustice of our Social System with vigour, emphasis and eagerness ; 
but suggesting different solutions. . . . 

' Passed Streatley . . . also two gents bathing in the rushes on the 
towing-path side of the river. {A note by the ladies — discovery of Moses by 
a lady amoiig the rushes on a former occasion.) . . . 

' At Wallingford Took up quarters at the Town Arms Hotel kept by 
one Thirza Ransom ; place smelt horrible. . . . 

' Indifferent sapper ; smell still rampant ; W. M. partook of five 
lemon squashes. 

' Sunday, August 15. Abominable extortion in the charges of Thirza 
Ransom. Indignation (suppressed) of W. M., Mrs. M. and R. C. G. Start 
effected at 9.30. Warned all people on both banks of the river to avoid 
the Town Arms Hotel. 

' Towed on to Clifton Lock and stopped for dinner just above it. 
W. M. (though angry) was appointed cook with excellent results as on two 
former occasions. 

' During dinner D. M. recounted the story of his having partaken of 
mangy roast dog at Southampton at an hotel kept by a lady whose Christian 
name was also Thirza. {Note by a lady during dinner " potted grouse is 
made of black beetles.'") 



122 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

' Towed up to Culham Lock. (Note by the Lock Keeper " I do not 
keep the Lock, the Lock keeps me.") 

' At this spot a number of children appeared and whined a melancholy 
and persistent ditty, " Please, sir, throw us a copper." (Note by the smallest 
infant, " Crow us a thropper.) D. M. and Miss May injured their own 
moral sense and that of the children by doing so. 

' Towed on to Abingdon ... on the towing-path an infant saved his 
own life by nearly tumbling into the water and R. C. G. saved the lives of 
the whole party by jumping on to the top of the Ark under the bridge 
and pushing her uphill through it. (Note by R. C. G. This was one of 
many instances in which life was saved in various ways and by different 
people throughout the expedition.) ' 

After Oxford again comes a note : — 

' During this and the preceding day the whole party were frequently 
caused to groan in spirit by a succession of puns so outrageous that no 
words could describe them and no intelligent individual do ought else but 
shudder at the recollection of their number and nature. . . .' 

And so the Log runs on, with its significant entries of ' great 
hilarity,' while the hoHday spirit of that vanished summer — the 
happy mood which in every triviaUty saw fresh food for 
merriment — still lives in its pages, though of those who then 
made merry, alas ! all but one have ' gone to the Land of no 
laughter.' 

' I have treasured mental pictures of this journey,' relates 
Miss Morris, ' with De Morgan in the foreground, always genial 
and content, whether called upon to scull our uncouth boat with 
its happy ragamuffin crew through the crowd of a genteel 
regatta, or to celebrate the voyage in verse and picture.' But 
to little Margaret Burne- Jones De Morgan penned an account 
of his adventures as follows : — 



William De Morgan to Margaret Burne-Jones. 

' Kelmscott, 
' August 1 6 — '80. 
*No! August 17 — '80. 
' My dear little Margot, — 

' As to writing an account of our most eventful voyage — how can I ? 
It would take all the columns of a copy of the Daily Telegraph. Besides 
I can't remember one thing from another 

' Very generally speaking, I did not exert ijiyself at all to do anything, 
but I exerted everybody else very much indeed. I lay in the boat engaged 
in the manufacture of puns and bad jokes, and every one else rowed and 
steered and pushed and slapped and pinched the boats to make them 

go- 

' Our boat had one sail (which we didn't use) and the helmsman never 
looked particularly pale, at least till the end of the voyage, when several 
characters, strange to say, were unwell, this was because they towed the 



THE MERTON PERIOD 



123 




boats and got 
squeezed — I can 
tell you when a 
chap tries to tow, 
he gets exactly like 
curried fowls in 
tins, inside, owing 
to the compression. 
' We set sail 
from Hammersmith 
as 'twer on Tues- 
day and arrived 
here so to speak on 
Monday. We slept 
at Sun bury on 
Tuesday, and were 
waked by a cock- 
a-doodle, but 
wouldn't say doo 1 
' There were once seven towns built by the inhabitants of Sunbury — 
it was the first thing built — Monbury and Tuesbury are extinct — Wednes- 
bury still exists — Thursbury not — Fribury is in Switzerland where natives 
call it Fribourg-en-Swisse, but that is because they are foreigners and 
cannot help it — Saturbury was never finished owing to the half-holiday. 
' Our next Station was Windsor, where the Castle is too large to move, 
but large enough to take the Queen for all that, and any number of Bishops 
and Knights into the bargain. 

' I looked for Newton, ^ but I couldn't see him 

' Eton is a pretty place, it is called so after the fish which are eaten 

there 

' Then we came to Great Marlowe, which reminded us of little Margot. 
' We stayed at the Complete Angler. It is called so after an Angle 
of 360° in the immediate neighbourhood. We saw the Obtuse Angler 
staying there. 

' Then came Sonning — a very prett)' crib — it is so called from the 

French sonner, to ring a bell, because we rang the bell so often for things. 

' The next place was Wallingford, scilicet Wailingfold, because the 

bill was very high and we lamented — and a very silly set * we were not 

to ask beforehand what inn to go to 

' The next was Oxford, when in spite of Mr. Morris's dreadful revolu- 
tionary sentiments we slept in the King's Arms. There are many deriva- 
tions of Oxford, and it probably comes from all of them, though every one 
has his favourite. 

' Auksford from the Auks — they are not there but in the Orkneys — 
that doesn't matter — if they like to give their name — let them — that's 
their look out. 

' Arxford — from the inquiring spirit of the Dons. 
' Arksford — because a narrer mind only wants a narrer "at [an Ararat]. 
They are ashamed of this and always wear 
broad ones. Also Boxford and Coxford because 
they cannot easUy take in more than one idea 
at a time — [erasures] that's enough ! 

' Then we came on here yesterday. We were 
towed by Mr. Bossom (who continually un- 
bossomed liimself from the bank into Mr. Morris's 

^ A reference to the firm of Winsor & Newton, colour merchants. 
• Gratis. [Note by De Morgan.] 




124 



WILLIAM DE MORGAN 



sympathetic ear until the latter murmured apainst him) as far as Bablock- 
hithe, or Badbloke-hithe, so called from Wm. Morris and your Uncle 
Crommy Price. We got through lots of weirs, and unhappily I passed 
without noticing it (so as to mention it) Weir 7, on which Wordsworth 
wrote that pretty poem. We nearly got drowned getting through Radcote 
Bridge — some strong language was used, but I name no names. It is 
very difficult going upliiil through Bridges. 




' However, we are all safe and sound after many perils past. "We 
didn't finish the ham and we have still got 12 pounds of the cheese — four 
bottles of the champagne arrived safe — the remainder was gone, and we 
cannot account for it. 

' With all their loves accept mine from your loving uncle.' 




THE MERTON PERIOD 125 

Nearly twenty years later De Morgan was asked by 'little 
Margot's ' husband, Mr. Mackail, to fill in certain gaps in the 
picture of that merry voyage, and looking back through the haze 
of memory to those far-away summer days, he related how 
' among the things that come out most prominent in my recollec- 
tion ' was one evening when ' at the Hotel where we put up,' 
there occurred a battle royal respecting Charles Dickens's creation, 
Mrs. Harris, as to whether she was, or was not, an abstraction. 

' It began like this : We played Twenty Questions, and Mrs. 
H. was the subject to be guessed — I think by me, as I was sent 
out of the room while the discussion proceeded how my first 
question — " abstract or concrete ? " should be answered. I 
remember being outside the door when the waiter came up from 
the people in the room underneath to know if anything was the 
matter. It was a warm discussion, but the furniture was strong, 
and there was nothing in the bill for breakages. It was virtually 
between Charles Faulkner, whom we had picked up at Oxford — 
and he maintained that Mrs. Harris was just as much a concrete 
idea as any other character in fiction. Morris repudiated this 
indignantly almost, affirming that she wasn't even a character 
in fiction, as she doesn't occur in the story, except as an invention 
of Mrs. Gamp, who is herself a character in fiction. There is 
certainly no conclusive evidence that Mrs. Gamp had any definite 
image or idea of Mrs. Harris in her mind — and that she wasn't 
merely a LIE, pure and simple, in which case perhaps she 
couldn't be regarded as concrete. It's a delicate question. I 
recollect discussing it afterwards with M. in the Merton Abbey 
days when I was putting down the foundation of my unfortunate 
building there. It was recalled to our mind by the concrete — 
naturally. 

' The foregoing about Mrs. Hanis gives a fair idea of what 
the voyages up the river were like — according to my recollection 
we none of us stopped laughing all the way. The second voyage 
must have been just about when Merton Abbey was started, as 
I remember, at Sandford, near Oxford, there was a chimney 
falling down and some remarks were made about Sandford and 
Merton — this fixes it in my mind.' 

For out of that happy comradeship — those eager days of 
work, those golden days of laughter — had grown a project 
between William Morris and De Morgan to combine the site of 
their separate undertakings and to settle their factories either 
on the same premises or near together. Orange House had, in 
its turn, become too cramped in space for De Morgan ; and 
Morris was anxious to concentrate his own various enterprises 
under one roof. But the project dragged on as a pleasing possi- 
bility for some time before it materialized. Miss Morris relates : — 

' The country easily accessible from London was explored a 



L_„ 



126 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

long time in vain ; then one summer holiday a disused silk-mill 
with most of the necessary qualifications was discovered in a 
remote village, one of those jewel-like clusters of grey buildings 
that nestle among the slopes of the Cotswolds. All the points 
in favour of this site (so far removed from the " great wen ") 
were seriously and eagerly considered, those against it being set 
aside for future consideration. However, this dream of reviving 
the crafts in a part of the country where they had formerly 
flourished had to be regretfully abandoned by the two friends, 
and the laughing waters of that wide free country to be exchanged 
for the sleepy Wandle and the melancholy of the once-country 
struggling against conversion into town. I think that discovery 
of the ideal factory must have been in 1880, the year that the 
two families made a memorable journey to London from Kelm- 
scott by water in the Ark.' 

De Morgan himself relates : ' My own settlement at Merton 
came about in this wise. Morris and I were always talking over 
an imaginary factory which I was to occupy jointly with him. 
It wasn't so much that we believed in it — indeed, we always 
called it the Fictionary — as that it gave us an endless excuse 
for going over premises. We raised the hopes of many a pro- 
prietor of unsaleable property, always going carefully into the 
minutest details and arranging the rooms, which was to have 
which, and so forth, till the miserable owner really believed a 
deal was sure to eventuate. We brought away bottles of water 
for analysis to make sure that it was fit to dye with. I recollect 
Morris's delight when a certificate was sent from an eminent 
analyst to the effect that a sample taken from pipes supplying 
all Lambeth was totally unfit for consumption — and could only 
result in prompt zymotic disease ! " There's your science for 
you, De M. ! " said Morris. I explained that, if the analyst had 
known that 250,000 people drank the water daily, he would 
have analysed it different. This was in Battersea, and never 
came to anything. 

' I think Blockley was nearest to fructifying of any of the 
places we saw. Blockley is a village in Gloucestershire, or 
Oxford or Worcester, I can't say which, all those counties having 
split up into fragments in that comer, and become as it were 
sprays of map-chips. We drove there somehow, from Fairford 
maybe, and found it an old village of many water-mills, which 
Dnce turned out endless silk yarn for Coventry. The mills were 
ill empty and decaying, and we might have bought them for 
i^ery little. Morris was very much in love with the place. It is 
true he did not want water-power to the extent of 200 h.p., but 
then the place was so delightful, and there were such a lot of 
people out of work there. The last notice of wage-reduction 
ivas on the doors of the workshops, sevenpence a day, I think, 




Dish, saucer-shaped, painted in colours with a peacock against a flowering tree. 

Diameter 16 inches 

[At the Victoria & AJhcrt Museum, London 



THE MERTON PERIOD 127 

the last gasp before the trade succumbed, which it finally did 
when the silk-worm disease impaired the silk, and made it un- 
workable in their (or these) machines. 

' The expectations of the unhappy owners were worked up 
by our inspections (I know we went twice), but common sense 
and Wandle over-ruled Morris, and Blockley vanished.' 

In the spring of 1881, Morris wrote to De Morgan : — 

' Kelmscott House, 

' Hammersmith, 

' Saturday. 
•Dear De M., — 

' I wish you would come over to-morrow. The fictionary sounds 
likely to become a factory : Welsh [the out-going tenant at Merton] has 
practically accepted our offer. Also we have practically settled matters 
with the lawyers and the owners : so adieu Blockley and joy for ever, 
and welcome grubbiness, London, low spirits and boundless riches. 

' Your affec, 

' W. Morris.' 

Only one more attempt at exploration did the friends sub- 
sequently make, cycling together to inspect an unsuitable place 
at South wark — ' Our last expedition,' wrote Morris regretfully 
on April 28, ' till Merton Abbey gets too small for us ! ' 

Thus the joint search which Morris and De Morgan had so 
long prosecuted came to an end, and the ' Fictionary ' material- 
ized in the summer of 1881. The premises at Merton Abbey, 
which covered seven acres of ground, were disused print-works 
on the high road from London to Epsom, just seven miles from 
Charing Cross, and, although old-fashioned, were in a good state 
of repair. They had originally been part of a silk-weaving 
factory started by Huguenot refugees, and it seemed fitting that 
the descendant of a Huguenot refugee should utilize them. 
Through them ran the river Wandle supplying the clear water 
which was essential to the scheme ; while a hint of romance still 
clung to the locality where, beyond the meadow, the remains 
of a mediaeval wall marked the site of the former Abbey and 
constituted the sole relic of Nelson's ' dear, dear, Merton ' whi«:h 
had been pulled down many years before. 

' When Mr. De Morgan was clearing out to go to Merton,' 
relates Mr. Bale, ' it was a strange sight. He was always slaj> 
dash in those days, and he couldn't stand the bother of packing. 
He just sat on a chair and put a hammer through dishes worth 
£2 los. and £3, at the same time saying, " Go on, boys, help your- 
selves ! " — which you may be quite sure we did. 

' When he pulled the kiln down to go to Merton, bothered 
if he didn't give all his bricks (especially his fire-bricks) to the 
Borough of Chelsea and actually paid the cartage ! when he must 
have known he would want them badly at Merton. As it was 



128 WILLIAM DE MORGAN 

he had fine material for breaking up to mix with his fire clay in 

making his tiles and vases. 

' Wlien I arrived at Merton, I found he had built his kiln 
in and on the gound, right in the centre of the building — the 
chimney shaft quite a splendid idea, but unfortunately it was 
built over the centre of the kiln, and the weight of the shaft was 
enormous, two fire-bricks thick. I saw that it was nice and 
comfortable to start with, but that I shouldn't like to be there 
when the kiln was beginning to wear out, for if it fell it would 
take the whole of the building with it.' 

De Morgan's own account of his proceedings in this new 
venture were as follows : ' In 1881-2 I took a piece of land 
at Merton Abbey and erected buildings and kilns there. . . . 
I first constructed a magnificent basement, and then decided 
it was too handsome to put to the base purposes meant for a 
mere basement, so I built another storey and that was, in a 
sense, the same story, for unfortunately it proved too magnificent 
for what I intended ; so I had to build another one, and so on 
till the building became a sky-scraper, and then it wasn't suitable 
for anything I wanted, and I had to move, and that was the end 
of that story ! ' 

One serious objection to Merton, however, of which he soon 
became aware, was its inaccessibility from London, and the daily 
journey there grew yet more irksome as his health gave cause 
for anxiety. He was already suffering from a weakness of the 
spine which troubled him for the remainder of his days, and 
was then believed to be the result of a tendency towards phthisis ; 
moreover, in 1884, the need for exercising special precaution 
against this constitutional delicacy was brought home to him 
cruelly by the death of his sister Annie, Mrs. Thompson. The 
letter which Morris wrote to him from London on this occasion 
still survives : — 

♦ Kelmscott House, 

'January 19, 1884. 
' My dear Bill, — 

' Of course from what you said to me I have been expecting your 
sad news any day. What is there to say about it save that it is a sad 
tale ? However, Ufe is good as long as we can really live, and even sorrow 
if so taken has something good in it as a part of life, as I myself have 
found at times — yet have not the less bemoaned myself all the same. 
' So in spite of yourself I wish you a long life, my dear fellow, to play 
your due part in. 

' Give my love and sympathy to your mother and Mary — I shall hope 
to see you soon again. 

• Yours affectionately, 

' William Morris.' 

At this date it did not look as though the ' long life ' which 
his friend wished him would ever be De Morgan's portion. Yet 



THE MERTON PERIOD 129 

his enthusiasm counteracted physical weakness, and he struggled 
on with apparently unabated energy. Meanwhile he retained 
the show-room in Chelsea till 1886, when he took premises at 
45 Great Marlborough Street, formerly the house of Mrs. Siddons, 
for the exhibition of his pottery in what had once been a large 
ball-room on the ground floor. 

'About a year later,' he relates, 'owing to circumstances 
connected with health, I was obliged to limit my supervision of 
my factory at Merton. The long journey every day was more 
than I could manage and I was unable to make my domestic 
arrangements fit in with the plan I always had of residing there. 
Practically I had to choose between giving up the business and 
bringing the factory nearer home.' None the less, it is said that 
one consideration alone clinched his wavering decision to leave 
Merton. He was at this date absorbed in the designing and 
decoration of a pot of abnormal size which subsequently became 
the property of Lord Ashbuniham. This chef d'asuvre would 
not go into the great kiln at Merton ; and where his art was 
concerned, no consideration, monetary or otherwise, was ever 
a.llowed to stay action. The erection of a new and larger kiln 
was immxediately decided upon ; Merton Abbey had become too 
small for him ; and he abruptly brought to a close what may be 
termed the second epoch in his manufacture of pottery. 

A rumour gained credence that he was giving up his work, 
and he wrote as follows to the wife of his old friend Henry 
Holiday : — 

William De Morgan to Mrs. Holiday. 

' December i6, '87. 

' If F. told you I was going to give up making lustres, it must be that 
he has been giving ear to a rumour to that effect which I beUeve is fre- 
quently put about by some disinterested admirers of mine. 

' I call them disinterested because they don't take any interest in the 
circulation of my goods, and I suppose they are admirers or they wouldn't 
copy my goods so closely, faults and all ! 

' The funny part of it is that we can none of us make a really good 
piece of lustre ware to save our lives. 

' Cantagalli of Florence makes good lustre, and Clement Massier, a 
Frenchy Mossoo, has done some rather interesting ones lately. 

' However, to resume, I am not giving up lustre making. On th.^ 
contrary, I am hoping to turn out some really creditable work very soon 
at the pottery at Sands End, when I have removed from Merton Abbey, 
to be within reach of home. ... I have been awfully busy and gone 
nowhere.' 

It was in 1888 that De Morgan started work in De Morgan 
Road, Sands End, Fulham, entering into partnership with 
Halsey Ricardo. ' I am glad you are not a sleeping-partner,' 
he wrote encouragingly to the latter ; ' My idea of a sleeping- 
partner is a partner who just wakes up to share the profits and 



130 



WILLIAM DE MORGAN 



then goes to sleep again ! ' But before the removal to Fulhara 
actually came to pass another and yet greater change had taken 
place in De Morgan's life, which is thus referred to by Mr. Bale : — 
' Mr. De Morgan was, as I have said, a very generous master. 
If any man was in trouble, his hand went to his pocket at once. 
One day a lad in his employ came to him with the news that he 
was going to get married. Mr. De Morgan at once said, " Then 
you'll want more money if you're going to keep a wife, so I'll 
raise your wages." After that, all the lads were for getting 
manied and he had to treat them all the same. At last he could 
stand it no longer, and when a fresh one came to him with the 
same news, he said, " Now look here, boys, I can have no more of 
this. The next man in this factory who gets married will get 
the sack." But the laugh turned against him, for the next man 
to get married v/as Mr. De Morgan himself.' 

William De Morgan to Edward Burne- Jones. 

' Chelsea, 

' June 21, 1885. 




* Dear Ned, — 

' I meant to have come in yesterday evg. ; but I was engaged to be 
married and couldn't ! 

' I wanted to convey the news to you of two engagements that have 



THE MERTON PERIOD 131 

just come to pass. One is mj'- own — I am engaged to a lady. The other 
is Evelyn Pickering's — She is engaged to a cove, or bloke. 

' Having supplied you with the data (see frontispiece) she and I are 
both strongly disposed to come round some time and see if you can guess 
whom we are respectively engaged to. Don't give it up f 

' We send you ail our united kind love, in which my mother and sister 
commingle. 

' Yours afEectly, 

• D. M.' 

Edward Biirne- Jones to William De Morgan. 

* My dear D. M., — 

' I am so glad, but you might have knocked me down with a crow- 
bar, I was so surprised — regular took aback I were. 

' Now that's pretty comfortable, I call it — we are just W'here we were 
and no complications between parties. 
' We are all glad about it. 

' Find a day next week for a feast and come both of you and we'll 
have larks. 

' Yes, It is admirable — in former merrier years I should have called 
it capital, but the word tenifies me now and whenever I see it I slink 
away. 

' My dear fellow, I feel as if / had suggested it ! 

' Always your affte, 

'Ned.* 



EVELYN 
DE MORGAN 



CHAPTER VI 
THE STORY OF THE PICKERINGS 

FOR a brief space we must turn from the life-story of William 
De Morgan to consider that of his wife, since for thirty 
years she was destined to be the most prominent factor in the 
moulding of his later career. But in order to measure the quahty 
of her influence it is necessary first to understand something of 
her own temperament and its development, derived alike from 
her immediate ancestry and environment. 

Mary Evelyn Pickering was the eldest daughter of Percival 
Andree Pickering, Q.C., Recorder of Pontefract, Attorney- 
General for the County Palatine and sometime Treasurer of the 
Inner Temple. He married in 1853 Anna Maria Spencer-Stan- 
hope, who was herself the eldest daughter of John and Lady 
Ehzabeth Spencer-Stanhope, of Cannon Hall, Yorkshire. 

Of the intellectual qualifications of the Pickerings as a race 
it is possible to speak with an unusual degree of certainty from 
a remote period. ' I apprehend,' said Sir kaac Heard, Garter 
King of Arms, writing to Evelyn's grandfather. ' that there is 
scarcely any family in England so well descended as yours, and 
who can so weU authenticate it, not merely by the pedigree, 
but by the records of the kingdom, combining ancient nobihty 
and royalty.' Nor, he might have added, were there many 
families the record of which — other than this cursory glance 
which is all that we can here devote to it — might prove so enter- 
taining to posterity and full of lively incident. 

We have seen how the De Morgans belonging to the earlier 
generations regarded life very seriously. They were willing to 
sacrifice aU worldly advantage to their convictions— alike to 
orthodoxy or heterodoxy ; and we have seen, too, how William, 
with his versatile genius and his happy Bohemianism, was, in 
much, the product of a collateral inheritance. The same may 
be said of his wife and her forbears. But while the Pickerings, 
as a race, regarded life with an equal gravity, this did not, in 
their case, engender any placid indifference to worldly advantage. 
Brilliant, comely and self-assertive through the generations, 
their constant prominence in the angry world of politics was, 

135 



136 EVELYN DE MORGAN 

it must be admitted, usually on the side of aggression — occasion- 
ally mis-named liberty ; but neither did they despise the plums 
of existence. 

Only one noted member of the family seems to have left 
behind him an entirely peaceful memory ; Sir James Pickering, * 
one of the earliest recorded Speakers of the House of Commons, 
circa 1378, who placidly represented the Counties of Westmor- 
land and Yorkshire as Knight of the Shire from 1362 to 1497. 
For the rest, where there was a turmoil in the State, the Pickerings 
figured in it, and sank or swam with the swaying of the tide. 
Their crest, a bear's paw with the claws somewhat in evidence, 
and the suggestive motto Pax tua, requies mea remained singularly 
well chosen. 

Thus John Pickering, B.D., Prior of the Dominican House of 
Cambridge, helped to organize and was a leader of the Pilgrimage 
of Grace, in consequence of which Henry VUI wrote that ' Dr. 
Pickering sJiould be sent up to him,' and Dr. Pickering was duly 
executed at Tyburn in 1537. Another learned Dr. Pickering, 
a kinsman, at the same date and for the same cause, long 
languished in the Tower ; while a few years later Sir William 
Pickering, Ambassador 'to France in 1551, celebrated as a courtier 
and diplomatist, narrowly escaped a similar fate by being con- 
cerned in Wyatt's conspiracy. 

This Sir William, ' a Patron of the Arts,' however, whose 
fine tomb may be seen to-day in St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, had a 
remarkable career, to which space will not now permit us to do 
justice. His father was Knight-Marshal to Henry VHI, and 
he early figured at Court, not always, according to history, in 
enviable fashion. For instance, in 1543, on the significant date 
of April I, we are told that he and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, 
were brought before the Council charged with the heinous offence 
of ' eating fiesh in Lent ' and of ' walking about the streets of 
London at night breaking the windows of the houses with stones 
shot from cross-bows. ' These misdeeds, which sound like the result 
of an inconvenient ebullition of youthful spirits, William at first 
denied, then confessed, and was forthwith imprisoned in the 
Tower. But later he acquitted himself with such credit as to 
erase the memory of that luckless ' All Fools ' day, and after 
the accession of Queen Ehzabeth, having amply proved his 
prowess both in the field and in the more subtle strife of the 
diplomatic world, he apparently designed to live quietly at his 
home, Pickering House, in the parish of St. Andrew Undershaft, 
London. Fate, however, was against his purpose, for we learn 
that, ' being a brave, wise and comely English gentleman,' he was 
seriously thought of as a suitor for Elizabeth's hand. The 

> I am here following the pedigrees compiled by the late W. Vade 
Walpole and by Edward Rowland Pickering, which are obviously correct. 




< 5 
J 2 






5 H 



CQ 



_ J > " * ' ' « . 



THE STORY OF THE PICKERINGS 137 

capricious Queen indeed showed him such marked preference 
that the ambitious courtiers with whom she was surrounded 
became alarmed. In 1559 we are told that ' the Earl of Arundel 
. . , was said to have sold his lands, and was ready to flee out 
of the kingdom because he could not abide in England if the 
Queen should marry Mr, Pickering, for they were enemies.* 
Another chronicler with a note of venom relates that so imperious 
was the speech of Sir William, so overbearing his demeanour, 
and so lavish his expenditure on the rich dress with which he 
adorned his handsome person, that he thereby lent a handle to 
those who would fain have wrought his undoing. Nevertheless, 
although he excited much jealousy, he successfully avoided the 
pitfalls which beset his path owing to the too open admiration 
of the Queen, and eventually succeeded — no mean feat under 
the circumstances — in expiring peacefully with his comely head 
still intact on his shoulders and his neck unclasped by the hang- 
man's rope. To Cecil he left his ' papers, antiquities, globes, 
compasses,' and his favourite horse. 

By the sixteenth century, the Pickerings, who had previously 
been landowners in Westmorland and Yorkshire, were inhabiting 
the fine old Tudor mansion of Tichmarsh in Northamptonshire, 
now completely disappeared. There, in 1605, Sir Gilbert Picker- 
ing gained for himself great kudos for his activity in apprehending 
the conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot, although amongst them 
was his own brother-in-law, Robert Keyes, who, in consequence, 
suffered for such ' apish behaviour ' by being executed in com- 
pany with Guy Fawkes at Westminster. Sir Gilbert died in 
1613 ; and in Cromwellian times his grandson. Sir Gilbert, 
Baronet of Nova Scotia, and a brother John, of Gray's Inn, were 
prominent Parliamentarians. The former, to whom his cousin 
John Dryden, the poet,^ was secretary, sat in the Long Parlia- 
ment, being also one of the Protector's Council, and of his House 
of Lords. He was moreover one of the Judges of Charles I, but 
he attended the trial only at the outset, and was not of those 

* Cal. State Papers for For. Ser., 1559. 

" The connexion between the two Puritan famihes of Dryden and 
Pickering was a double one. Not only did a Dryden take ' o wife a Picker- 
ing, who became the mother of the poet, but a Pickering took to wife a 
Dryden. ' The home of John Dryden,' we are told, ' was at Tichmarsh, 
where his father, a younger son of the first baronet of Canons Ashby, 
had settled. Here he had married into the leading family of the place, 
the Pickerings, who resided at the great house. His wife was Mary, first 
cousin of Sir Gilbert, the head of the family, and daughter of Henry 
Pickering, rector of Aldwincle All Saints, and it was at her father's rectory 
that, in 1631, John, the eldest of her fourteen children, was born. An 
alliance between the Drydens and the Pickerings was the more natural 
in that both famiUes were strongly Puritan, and took the side of the 
Parliament in the Civil War.' — Highways and Byways in Northampton- 
shire, by Herbert A. Evans, p. 71. 



138 EVELYl^ DE MORGAN 

who signed the death warrant. Thus at the Restoration, although 
he was declared incapable of holding pubhc office, he escaped 
more drastic punishment tlirough the intervention of his brother- 
in-law, Edward Montague, Earl of Sandwich ; indeed Pepys 
tells us how he received from Lady Pickering ' wrapped up in a 
paper, £5 in silver ' to induce him to use his influence with her 
brother, ' my Lord, on behalf of her misguided husband.' 

During the Civil War, John, the brother of this Sir Gilbert, 
had raised the ' Pickering regiment ' for the Parliament among 
his Northamptonshire neighbours, and distinguished himself at 
Naseby and elsewhere. He is described as ' a little man, but 
of great courage ' ; nevertheless, he seems to have been wanting 
in tact and a fanatic of more pronounced type than his brother ; 
for in 1645 he caused a mutiny in the regiment which he com- 
manded by insisting on delivering to his troopers a rousing 
sermon at a moment when they were not in a suitable frame 
of mind to appreciate such an attention ! Another brother, 
Edward, was a lawyer, and is described by Roger North as a 
' subtle fellow, a money-hunter, a great trifler, and avaricious, 
but withal a great pretender to puritanism, frequenting the 
Rolls Chapel, and most busily writing the sermon in his hat that 
he might not be seen.' In brief, the Pickerings at that date, 
like others of their generation, seemed to have battened on a 
curious mixture of sermons and sanctity, of shrewdness and 
time-serving ; and to have sought Heaven dihgently with one 
eye still firmly fixed on their worldly advantage. 

Nevertheless, save for the daughter of Sir Gilbert Pickering, 
the beautiful and talented Mistress Betty, afterwards wife to 
John Creed of Oundle, who was acclaimed as an amateur artist 
of considerable local fame, we find no trace through the passing 
of the centuries that the family at Tichmarsh distinguished 
themselves in the gentler arts of literature or painting ; where- 
fore it is curious to reflect that from the Puritan Pickerings and 
the Huguenot De Morgans should have sprung two descendants 
both so unlike their ancestors in this respect as these whose life- 
story we are here reviewing. 

Glancing on, therefore, swiftly do\vn the generations, we 
come to Edward Lake Pickering, of the Exchequer, the great- 
grandfather of Evelyn De Morgan, who died in 1788. His wife 
Mary Umfreville, lived till 1836, when she expired in her 93rd 
year, a wonderful old lady who boasted, approved by Burke, 
that she was the last of the direct branch of the Umfrevilles, 
exhibiting a pedigree which begins with the Saxon Kings of 
England, and in which William the Conqueror figmcs as a less 
important unit over a century and a half later. This couple 
had two sons, who survived them, of whom the second was Edward 



THE STORY OF THE PICKERINGS 139 

Rowland Pickering, of Lincoln's Inn. He married Mary Vere, 
Dne of the most beautiful women of her day ; and to them were 
born eight sons and three daughters. 

The portraits of Edward Rowland which are extant exhibit 
tiim as a man of middle age, shrewd and kindly of countenance, 
md stately of pose ; though of necessity they fail to convey the 
quaint courtliness and old-world dignity with which he impressed 
all who came in contact with his attractive personality. 

' I delight in him,' [wrote Lady Elizabeth Spencer- Stanhope enthusiasti- 
cally, after meeting him for the first time at the date of her daughter's 
engagement to his son]. . . . ' He is exactly like the description of an 
old novel of Miss Burney's ... an unmistakable high-born and high-bred 
gentleman, in a brown scratch-wig, all on end on his head, with an indescrib- 
able mixture of kind-heartedness, slirewdness and humour in his counten- 
ance, standing on his own foundation, and feeling that his son and his 
family are at least on a par with any nobleman in the land. . . . He is of 
the same class of original as Lord Stanhope and Lord Suffolk — a sort of 
quaint, clever creature. . . . His pert little daughter-elect cannot think 
of him mthout laugliing, and he seemed inclined to laugh at himself I ' 

And later she writes yet more enthusiastically : — 

' I cannot tell you how delightful Mr. Pickering p^re is, quite like what 
one reads about in books, but never meets in real life . . . how you would 
delight in him, with his great good-breeding and extreme quaintness. He 
is very clever and unusual in his integrity ; I long for you to meet him, 
with his charming old-world manners and that brown scratch-wig standing 
straight upright from his head ! ' 

As to his wife, ' my dearest partner ' as he generally termed 
her. Lady Elizabeth, on first meeting her, pronounced her to be 
' one of the most gentle, lovely, loving, and I should think love- 
able of human beings ' — a description which aptly summed up 
the characteristics, and possibly the limitations, of the beautiful 
woman who won admiration from all whom she encountered. 
Throughout the passing years. Time never perceptibly printed 
a wrinkle on the smoothness of her exquisite skin, nor ruffled 
her placid outlook on a world where, for her, all combined to 
make the rough ways pleasant. Gentle, yielding, and charming 
from youth to age, generous without stint, and extravagant to a 
fault, she was likewise fastidious in many ways which, to a later 
generation would appear difficult of credence, but which never- 
theless seemed a necessary complement to her own individuality. 
For one, she had a horror of what, to her, was literally ' filthy 
lucre ' and refused ever to soil her hands by touching money 
which had been used before. Coins fresh from the bank were 
kept by her in little round boxes of horn or ivory, suited to their 
size, or dainty bags of wash-leather tied by coloured ribbon, 
and to these still cling the faint aroma of the attar of roses which 
once scented the pieces of shining gold or silver which they 



140 EVELYN DE MORGAN 

guarded so carefully from any chance of vulgar contamination. 

Edward Rowland worshipped his beautiful wife ; they 
remained lovers to the end of their days ; and as an old man, 
on the rare occasions when he was separated from her, he wrote 
to her letters which still breathe all the passionate devotion and 
tender reverence of romantic youth. 

Of the man}^ sons and daughters born to this couple, seven 
survived infancy ; and of these Percival Andree, the father of 
Evelyn De Morgan, was the second. 

An anecdote of his childhood has survived which at least 
bespeaks imagination and kindliness of heart. Percy, as he 
was called, had been receiving religious instruction from his 
mother, who had imparted to him the sad fate of Adam and 
Eve, summed up in that melancholy sentence ' Dust thou art 
and unto dust shalt thou return.' The words sank into the 
child's mind and made an impression which his elders little 
suspected. Afterw^ards, seated at the window gazing out on to 
the chill March day, he was heard to be weeping bitterly. Kind 
arms enclosed him, and sympathetic inquiries were made respect- 
ing the cause of his woe. But the child wept on unrestrainedly ; 
till at length, pointing to the street where the chill winds were 
blowing the dust in clouds past the house, he exclaimed tragically, 
' Oh ! poor, poor Adam and Eve ! — how they are blowing about ! ' 
The Divine vengeance which had apparently condemned our 
first parents to drift helplessly— and dirtily — through the ages 
appalled his tender heart and left him so crushed with despair 
that for long he refused to be comforted. 

In those days the custom still prevailed of concentrating all 
care and expenditure upon the education of the eldest son, while 
furnishing the younger members of the family only with the 
good solid instruction suitable to whatever profession they were 
destined to pursue. Edward Rowland did not follow this 
system. Each of the young Pickerings went to Eton, where 
several were distinguished both as scholars and cricketers, and 
then to the University. At Eton, Percy was known by the 
name of ' Mop-stick ' on account of his curly hair, and his good 
looks were proverbial. He became a great friend of young 
William Ewart Gladstone, who for many years subsequently 
kept up a conespondence with him, in which he expressed himself 
enthusiastically Tory in principle ; and only his change of 
politics, later in life, made a severance between the friends. At 
Cambridge, after going to Trinity College, Percy, like his elder 
brother, became a Fellow of St. John's By and by, at the Bar, 
he was noted for his eloquence, his penetration and his sense of 
humour. 

He was past forty when the event occurred which was destined 
to alter all the remainder of his days. The story has already 



THE STORY OF THE PICKERINGS 141 

been told in The Letter-hag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope ; 
but so pretty a romance may be briefly recapitulated. 

While on the Northern Circuit Mr. Pickering went to stay 
with his friend Mr. Milnes Gaskell at Thornes House, near Wake- 
field, who, one day, suggested that they should go over to Cannon 
Hall, a few miles off, to call upon Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stan- 
hope and her charming daughters. Arrived at their destination, 
however, they found the family had gone to attend a school-treat 
which was taking place that afternoon, so the two men walked 
down through the sunny park in search of the scene of festivity. 

Now it happened that, a short time before, the village school- 
children had presented Anna Maria Stanhope, Lady Elizabeth's 
eldest daughter, with a little bonnet of white plaited straw which 
they had made for her, and thinking to please them she had 
decided to wear it on this occasion. The prim little headgear, 
shadowing her dark hair and brilliant eyes, proved singularly 
becoming, but her sisters had laughed at her for wearing it. 
' You look a perfect Lucilla ! ' they declared, referring to Mrs. 
Hannah More's novel ; ' All that is wanted is Ccelebs in search 
of a wife ! ' 

And as though their words were prophetic, Ccelebs appeared 
in the person of the unknown visitor, and as instantly fell in 
love with the girl whom he saw thus for the first time enacting 
the role of Lucilla — suitably employed playing with the village 
children in the park, her pretty face framed in the simple bonnet 
of white plaited straw. 

But the course of the romance did not at first run smoothly ; 
and three or four years passed before, at his third proposal, his 
devotion found its reward. After their marriage the young 
couple lived first in Green Street, in a little house with a bay 
window, now pulled down, which during a former generation 
had sheltered another romance, for there had resided the beauti- 
ful Miss Farren who became Lady Derby. Later they removed 
to No. 6 Upper Grosvenor Street ; and there their eldest daughter, 
Mary Evelyn, was bom, while there also during the years which 
followed, two sons and then another daughter — the present 
writer — came into existence. 

' There was no hope for Evelyn from the first ! ' her mother 
used to say laughingly, in view of an episode which occurred 
at the child's christening. A great-uncle, Mr. Charles Stanhope, 
officiated on that occasion, a venerable and charming person, 
who nevertheless was noted for many a malapropism which 
severely taxed the gravity of his congregation. At the period 
in the service when the sponsors are called upon to renounce all 
evil on behalf of the unconscious infant, Mr. Stanhope turned 
to them, and demanded in a stentorian voice — ' Do you, in the 
name of this child, promise to remember the devil and all his 



142 EVELYN DE MORGAN 

works ? ' The perplexed god-parents, faced with such an unex- 
pected dilemma, and feeling it useless to argue the point, glanced 
helplessly at each other and responded fervently — ' We do ! ' 

In view, however, of the question of heredity, it may be well 
to glance at the heritage which the young mother brought to her 
children from her own forbears, and which, in the case of her 
eldest daughter, seems to have been a determining factor both 
in regard to temperament and career. 

Mrs. Pickering, on her father's side, came of two families, 
the Spencers and the Stanhopes, who had been settled in York- 
shire since the Middle Ages — a race of fine old country Squires of 
a type now rapidly becoming extinct, men who, generation after 
generation, trod reputably, each in the footsteps of his pre- 
decessor, and proved themselves, as occasion dictated, shrewd 
magistrates, bold sportsmen, brave soldiers, stout topers, pro- 
found scholars or fine gentlemen. But they were apparently 
men of simple lives and of single aims, for the two houses which 
they inhabited show little trace of the inveterate dilettante or 
collector, nor of any keen lover of art having resided in 
them. 

It is therefore when we turn to the family of Lady Elizabeth, 
the wife of John Stanhope, that it becomes evident whence came 
the artistic element which was to develop in both her child and 
grandchild. 

The story of this lady's family has been told, at length, else- 
where ; ^ for our present purpose it must suffice to say that she 
was a direct descendant of Thomas, Earl of Leicester, the great 
dilettante of the mid-eighteenth century, and coadjutor of 
another famous dilettante and architect. Lord Burlington. 
Thomas Coke, who on a barren part of the Norfolk coast erected 
a palace of Italian art and filled it with choice treasures of anti- 
quity, was the possessor of a master-mind, and left the impress 
of genius on all with which he dealt. His nephew and successor, 
the father of Lady Elizabeth, better known as ' Coke of Norfolk,' 
although his best energies were concentrated on agriculture and 
questions of practical utility, exhibited gifts which equalled 
those of his predecessor. 

Throughout his life he was the liberal patron of art and 
literature, and showed a fine discriminating taste in regard to 
both, while the masterly manner with which he enhanced the 
work that Thomas Coke had commenced, and transformed the 
bleak, barren land surrounding his home, is matter of history 
But a passionate love of beauty seemed inherent in his race, the 
joy in exquisite colour, in grace of outline, in perfection of detail 
— the striving after idealism even in the most commonplace 

* Coke of Norfolk and his friends, by A. M. W. Stirling. 



THE STORY OF THE PICKERINGS 143 

accessories of daily life — combined with a hunger for i:reation 
and a tireless endeavour. 

Brought up in such an atmosphere. Coke's daughters 
developed a resultant love of art which early bore fruition. His 
eldest daughter, afterwards Lady Andover, was only fifteen 
when she painted a most remarkable picture with about five 
life-sized figures, of Belisarius begging — an ambitious and success- 
ful work even for an artist of more mature age ; while the second 
daughter, afterwards Lady Anson, also showed great artistic 
talent. Some of her pictures, painted when she was quite young, 
both original portraits and copies from the old Masters, are 
extraordinarily clever ; while the exquisite manner in which, 
later in life, she copied and renovated some of the delicate 
illuminations in the old missals at Holkham, filled Roscoe with 
admiration. 

Both she and her sister were pupils of Gainsborough, who 
stayed at Holkham to teach them ; and although it is impossible 
to tell if the master's brush improved the pupil's work, it is 
certainly difficult in some instances to distinguish between the 
paintings of the former and of the latter. 

Although Lady EUzabeth did not herself develop a faculty 
for Art to the same extent as did her two elder sisters, the talent 
for which her family had become conspicuous showed itself 
again in the person of her second son. Roddam Spencer-Stan- 
hope, whom we have already had occasion to mention, became 
an artist of no mean repute who, a friend of the members of the 
pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, is classed by posterity as one of 
that famous band. ' He is the finest colourist in Europe,' Burne- 
Jones said of him ; and his works show an almost Southern love 
of deep, glowing colour, and a dainty imagery which drifted 
into fairy-tales so that he was aptly described as ' a painter of 
dreams.' 

It is interesting, therefore, to note that the passion for Art, 
combined with the creative faculty, descended in three successive 
generations of Mrs. Pickering's family, yet in each instance it 
was a case of collateral, not direct, descent. 

Mrs. Pickering herself did not inherit the talent which her 
brother developed, although as a pupil of Harding her drawings 
and sketches are remarkable for facility and breadth of char- 
acter. But to her, as to so many of her generation. Art was 
primarily a question of routine, to be developed by careful 
instruction and conscientious training, while the imagination 
exhibited by the so-called pre-Raphaehte School always remained 
a subject for amusement rather than appreciation. 

Nevertheless, she was a woman of exceptional intellect, whose 
cleverness lay, not in superficial accomplishments, but in deep 
thought and extensive study, and early did she devote herself to 



144 EVELYN DE MORGAN 

the development of her children's minds. To the influence of 
her mentality must principally be attributed the love of intel- 
lectual pursuits and the thirst for knowledge which may be said 
to have characterized each member of her little family. She 
recognized that, during her own childhood, she had suffered 
much from the narrowing influence of the governesses of her 
day, with their limited education and their restricted outlook 
upon life, and she therefore determined that while her children 
should have every benefit of an education aided by professional 
teachers, they should not be abandoned to its disadvantages. 
No resident governess, therefore, was ever admitted into the 
house : masters came and went, the most efficient that money 
could procure, and from the first Evelyn profited by the same 
instruction as her brother ; she learnt Greek and Latin, besides 
French, German and Italian ; she studied classical literature, 
and became deeply versed in mythology : but it was the mother 
who inspired the actual love of knowledge as distinct from the 
drudgery of lessons.^ 

In all her children, a recollection of their early years was 
connected with what proved to them the happiest period of each 
day — the hour when they were summoned to a flower-laden room, 
and their mother read to them from some volume of absorbing 
interest. To her, reading aloud was a gift ; she delighted in 
it ; and her clear, musical voice ever after seemed indissolubly 
linked with the books which she first made them love. The 
range of literature thus covered was wide and comprehensive ; 
but where the books which were available on any particular 
subject did not convey the exact impression she wished to pro- 
duce, she herself supplied the deficiency. Thus history, she 
found, was apt to be written in a fashion which failed to grip 
the imagination of a child, so she wrote a history of England 
for her children of arresting interest, dwelling on the vital facts 
to be remembered, and making the whole so graphic that it 
became to her small listeners a living actuality, teeming with 
romance. Scientific books, too, she found were inevitably 
couched in language iU-adapted to the intelligence of her 
audience, so she wrote for them volumes which read like a fairy- 
tale : she described the wonderful prehistoric world, where Man 
was not, but where strange beasts abounded, and the dim ante- 
diluvian forests which aeons of time had fashioned into coal, 
pieces of which were then burning in the grate of the cosy httle 
room ; she dwelt on the discoveries of astronomy, the grand 
riddle of the stars which looked like glittering dust strewn over 
the dome of heaven ; the marvels of chemistry, of geology, of 
the practical apphcation of many recent discoveries. She wrote 
fluently, without effort, and with few erasures ; indeed the 
charm and the facihty of her style hint what success in the 



THE STORY OF THE PICKERINGS 143 

literary world would have been hers had she not confined hei 
talents solely to this labour of love.* 

How her children appreciated her efforts may be illustrated 
by a trivial incident. It happened that one day a dressmaker 
called at the hour devoted to this daily reading, and a message 
consequently was sent up to the nursery that the children were 
not to go down to their mother's room as usual. The blow 
was unexpected, and the eldest boy, Spencer, afterwards a 
scientist of international repute, but then a minute, self-important 
personage, considered that this innovation was not to be borne. 
He therefore made his way downstairs as fast as his sturdy little 
legs would carry him, and boiling with rage, marched to the 
dining-room where the innocent offender was seated waiting 
till Mrs. Pickering should summon her for a fitting. As the 
dressmaker herself afterwards described, the door suddenly 
opened and a small boy strode up to her with a face crimson 
with rage. ' You wicked, wicked woman ! ' he exclaimed vehe- 
mently ; then, stamping his little foot, he shook his fist in her 
face, and reiterating — ' / say you're a wicked, wicked woman 1 ' 
he rushed away sobbing as though his heart would break. It 
was not till later that she discovered the nature of her offence and 
of the animosity with v/hich she was ever afterwards regarded 
by the occupants of the nursery — in short, that she had deprived 
them of an hour's lesson in English history ! 

Another result of Mrs. Pickering's instructions was that, like 
the mother of William De Morgan, she occasionally found herself 
brought to book by questions difficult of elucidation, but which, 
to her small audience, presented all the gravity of scientific 
problems. ' Of course I know that God made Heaven and 
Earth,' Evelyn remarked, struggling with the first intricacies 
of theology, ' hut where did He sit when He made them ? ' — While 
Rowland, her second son, one night after he had been lovingly 
deposited in his little wooden crib, sent for his mother in a con- 
dition of dire anxiety, ' Mamma,' he demanded, * when the sim 
goes to hed—who tucks him up ? ' A vision of the nocturnal 
arrangements of the lonely planet disturbed the thoughts of 
the kindly little fellow, and as his father had been distressed at 
the uncomfortable fate of Adam and Eve, he too refused to be 
pacified by what seemed to him vague explanations of a harrow- 
ing problem. 

Another matter which troubled him was that he gleaned from 
Evelyn's somewhat lurid side-lights upon religion that Christ's 
second coming was destined to take place in a terrific thunder- 

^ After her death, a volume was pubUshed, Memoirs of Anna Maria 
Wilhelmina Pickering, wliich, as originally written by her, was a far more 
charming collection of anecdotes, jotted down haphazard for her children, 
and was not intended for, nor arranged for, publication. 

K 



146 EVELYN DE MORGAN 

storm. Consequently never did an electrical disturbance oi 
the elements occur that he was not filled with apprehension 
as to its possible result ; and one day, hearing an exceptionally 
loud crash in the heavens, he ran to his mother in undisguised 
dismay : ' My goodness 1 ' he exclaimed, casting a worried glance 
at the noisy sky, ' Don't you think that's enough to bring Him ? ' 

The Pickering nursery indeed presents, in much, an enter- 
taining contrast to the De Morgan nursery of twenty years 
earlier. The over-conscientious training resorted to in the 
former, the microscopic attention devoted to trifles, the constant 
chastisements for childish peccadilloes are all absent. The small 
Pickerings were carefully brought up ; they were highly edu- 
cated ; the number of their pastors and masters was almost 
abnormal ; but perhaps some of the aggressiveness of their 
ancestors had entered into their veins, for no instructors, however 
well qualified or highly remunerated, succeeded in suppressing, 
or even moulding, their individuality. 

As between the births of the older and the younger children 
was a space of some years, Evelyn and her brother Spencer, who 
was only three years his sister's junior, were perforce com- 
panions, and remained like a generation apart from their two 
successors in the nursery. They were both gifted with 
exceptional good looks, although Evelyn, from childhood, may 
be said to have been handsome rather than pretty. Her features 
were finely formed, the nose small and straight, the mouth less 
regular ; the eyelids covering her blue-grey eyes were full and 
rounded, indicative of imagination ; and her hair, in long brown 
tresses, shading to gold, fell in waves to her waist. Her 
expression was full of life and intelligence, though always marked 
by a noticeable discontent ; her hands were characteristic — 
small but lithe and firm, with the tapering fingers of the idealist ; 
while her whole personahty, from childhood to age, conveyed an 
impression of virility, of restlessness, and of a mind eager to 
absorb and to achieve, combined with a temperament highly 
strung and perhaps abnormally sensitive to suffering and to joy. 

Spencer, in those nursery days, was of a more pronounced 
beauty than his sister, a child who inevitably arrested attention 
with his exquisitely formed, delicate little features, his fair 
skin tinted hke a peach, and his hair of bright gold which fell 
in a luxuriant mass of curls nearly the same length as did that 
of his sister. Even when custom necessitated his locks being 
shorn, the curls, in defiance of his most laborious attempts at 
brushing and plastering them down, still clustered thickly over 
his shapely head, so that later at Eton, on account of his 
good looks and classical features, he was known as ' the 
young Antinous.' In the days of babyhood, however, George 
Frederick Watts enthusiastically pronounced him and his sister 



THE STORY OF THE PICKERINGS 147 

Evelyn to be the most beautiful children he had ever seen, and 
having expressed a wish to paint Spencer, he completed a portrait 
begun by Cosens, which shows a httle face of rare loveliness and 
refinement. 

Meanwhile Spencer, although a nursery autocrat and possessed 
of an imperious temper, was completely in subjection to his 
sister who, by virtue of her seniority, generally made him the 
tool for her many escapades. ' How I envy you,' Mrs. Pickering 
used to relate that an affected lady once said languidly to her — 
' you are so fortunate to have a girl at the head of your nurser}'- ! ' 
— ' I thought to myself,' Mrs. Pickering used to add with amuse- 
ment — ' that depends on the girl ! ' for Evelyn was never a cipher 
or a saint. 

' Why are you so glad not to have another sister ? ' Spencer 
was asked, it having been observed that he heaved a sigh of relief 
on being informed of the birth of his younger brother. ' Girls 
are such pinchers ! ' was the reply, at once fervent and concise. 

None the less, at times he seems to have adopted the tactics 
of his sister. One day the French governess, a certain Madame 
Mori, came to Mrs. Pickering to ask for a private interview, 
professing herself to be in despair at the unmanageability of her 
charges. Mrs. Pickering, in order to be secure from interruption 
and possible eavesdropping, took the excited Frenchwoman into 
an inner room, off her bedroom, half dressing-room, half boudoir, 
which had only one exit. There, having closed the door care- 
fully, she listened to a string of complaints uttered in voluble 
French, and proceeded to discuss the situation, dwelling at great 
length on the idiosyncrasies of the respective culprits and the 
wisest means to be adopted in order to bring both to a better 
frame of mind. By the window of the room, however, where 
this consultation took place, was a dressing-table, adorned in 
the then fashion with a pink cahco cover shrouded in lace like a 
lady in a voluminous skirt ; and suddenly from the recesses of 
this came a howl of agony. ' Spencer ! ' was heard in piercing 
accents — ' Oh ! you pinch so ! ' A hurried investigation revealed 
the fact that throughout the entire interview the two delinquents 
had been seated in this rosy tent Ustening with the greatest ze&t 
to the tale of their misdeeds, and to the despairing suggestions 
of a possible remedy ! 

Out of the many now forgotten pranks of those early days 
one is stiU remembered, possibly on account of its unusual daring 
or its disastrous sequel. It must first be explained that, with 
the exception of the birthdays of Mr. Pickering and his eldest 
son, aU such family anniversaries fell between August 26 and 30 
— indeed August 28 was the birthday both of Mrs. Pickering and 
her second son Rowland. Hence arose an opening for injustice. 
Although the season of such festivities might clash or overlap. 



148 EVELYN DE MORGAN 

the children considered that the mere accident of date ought 
not to interfere with what was their right ; four separate hohdays 
were undoubtedly their due, and four separate birthday cakes ; 
so that an attempt made by the elders to compress both feast 
and festivity — to make one holiday and one cake do for two 
events — was bitterly resented. Evel3'n indeed felt that a great 
principle was at stake, and on the approach of a day when she 
maintained that one of the birthdays ought to be kept but the 
powers in authority decreed that lessons should be done, she 
boldly determined that such an injustice should not be 
perpetrated. Late on the evening of the day before, therefore, 
every lesson-book was carefully collected by her and entrusted 
to the care of Spencer, a small and alarmed victim. The house 
in Grosvenor Street overlooked a mews at the back, and Spencer, 
acting under his sister's orders, after dusk chmbed on to the 
balcony railing in the rear of the house, and succeeded in thrusting 
the pile of lesson-books on to the roof of the neighbouring stables. 

In the morning when the governess arrived, great was her 
astonishment upon being informed that every single lesson-book 
had mysteriously disappeared. The reason of the disappear- 
ance, however, was so transparent that her wrath would not be 
appeased, and she insisted that the books should be found. 
Accordingly, hour after hour throughout the day was spent in a 
fruitless search, the two conspirators enjoying themselves greatly, 
and protesting, with entire truth, that not a single volume 
appeared to be anywhere in the house. In this fashion the 
holiday was secured, and the following morning early Spencer 
was sent to retrieve the missing books. But unfortunately it 
had rained in the night ; they were found to be sodden with wet, 
the covers of those which had been uppermost were reduced to 
pulp, and thus the true facts of the case were apparent. History 
draws a discreet veil over the sequel. 

The fact that the back windows of their home commanded a 
view of the mews proved a never-failing source of entertainment 
to the children. They watched the carriages and horses come 
and go, they knew the various drivers by sight, and established 
a bowing acquaintance with some. Lord Foley's coachman in 
a cocked hat was the object of their never-failing admiration ; 
and just as William De Morgan in his nursery twenty years 
earlier had decided that when he attained to man's estate he 
would be a sweep and a Jack-in-the-Green, so — alas ! for the 
mutabiUty of human wishes ! — did Spencer Pickering determine 
that he would one day be a coachman and thrill all onlookers 
with a portly presence and envied headgear. 

By and by, a species of Dumb-Crambo friendship was 
instituted by the children with some of the residents in the stables 
below, and another particularly attractive coachman and his 



THE STORY OF THE PICKERINGS 149 

wife, for some inexplicable reason, were known to them by the 
names of the ' He ha ! ha ! ' and the ' She ha ! ha ! ' The ' She 
ha ! ha 1 ' must have developed a decided affection towards the 
two mischievous sprites who signalled greetings to her from the 
balcony, for soon a more satisfactory mode of communication 
with them was established. A string was let down by the chil- 
dren to which pieces of toff}^ of their own making were attached 
as a gift to their unknown friend, who subsequently used to sign 
to them to let it descend, when she would tie on to it a little 
basket filled with delicious cakes and tartlets of her own baking 
which she watched mount to the balcony with supreme satis- 
faction. This mode of communication may have been suggested 
by hearing the nurses discuss the reprehensible behaviour of Miss 
De Horsey, who lived next door, and who used to electrify the 
respectable neighbourhood by letting down a string weighted by 
a bit of coal, at the hour when Lord Cardigan rode past. To 
this the latter attached his bUlets-dmix , which were promptly 
hauled up by the lady, until such time as she threw the last 
remnant of discretion to the winds, and departed finally from 
her father's house to the protection of her married lover. Till 
that took place, however, her vagaries continued to furnish 
perpetual food for comment throughout Upper Grosvenor Street, 
as did her startling costumes ; and the children at No. 6 used 
to watch her set out on her horse daily, clothed in one of the 
remarkable riding-habits which she affected — one was a bright 
green cloth, one a violet velvet, and one a black velvet, with each 
of which she used to wear a hat adorned with nodding plumes. 
Nevertheless, as Evelyn had established a human interest 
in regard to the denizens of the mews at the back of her home, 
so what was termed a balcony friendship was instituted with 
certain children who lived opposite, the family of Sir John, 
afterwards Lord, St. Aubyn. Since their respective parents 
were not acquainted, the children held that neither were they 
acquainted in the orthodox sense, wherefore they would pass 
each other in the street with a blank expression and punctiliously 
averted faces ; but on their opposite balconies they were friends, 
and a species of communication was established by signalling 
which was a source of amusement to each. Soon, when their 
respective elders were safely out of the way, little plays were 
enacted on each balcony for the benefit of the opposite neigh- 
bour, or charades performed with gesticulations which took the 
place of words, when the performers used to dress up in a fashion 
that amazed the passers-by who could catch occasional glimpses 
of them from the street below. At length, one day, Mrs. Picker- 
ing, returning early from a drive, observed a small but interested 
crowd gathered near her house, on the balcony of which two 
minute Christy miinstrels with blackened faces were performing 



150 EVELYN DE MORGAN 

on the bones and banjo. After this, the balcony theatricals 
were continued with more difficulty, on account of the closer 
supervision to which the would-be actors were subjected, and 
the Tragic Muse was principally in demand at their performances 
owing to the superior noiselessness of pathos to buffoonery. 

A far from silent assistant on these occasions, however, was 
a beautiful green parrot which used to swing contentedly in a 
cage on the balcony of No. 6, and who may be considered 
to have been the unconscious instrument in an unsuspected 
train of events. Lady Mary Waddup, as she was called — the 
surname being bestowed out of comphment to the cook — had 
once occupied her post of vantage while the house was 
being painted, and ever afterwards she indulged in an accom- 
plishment which she had learnt on this occasion. With her 
head cocked on one side, and a mischievous gleam in her bright 
eyes, she would wait with uncanny shrewdness till some unwary 
passer-by came near, when she would call out in a piercing voice 
— ' Take care ! Take care ! Wet paint ! Wet paint ! ' The 
victim of this farce would naturally start and anxiously examine 
his or her garments, then glance in perplexity at the paint, and 
next at the balcony whence came the shrill warning, but where 
no one w^as visible. Needless to say, the children rejoiced in 
this performance, till poor ' Lady Mary ' came to an untimely 
end by devouring the heads of a box of matches which she pulled 
into her cage. The nurses in relating her sad fate always referred 
to the instruments of her destruction as ' Lucifer matches,' and 
an impression consequently gained ground amongst the small 
occupants of the nursery that the Prince of Darkness had 
specially baited the delicacy which had proved the undoing of 
their favourite. 

It may have been the conduct of ' Lady Mary ' in regard to 
innocent pedestrians which suggested another amusement that 
was in great favour with its perpetrators, till one day it mis- 
carried in an alarming manner. Like the gi-een parrot, the 
conspirators would watch from the balcony tiU som.e suitable 
victim was selected from amongst those who passed below, 
whereupon a slight shower of water would be sprinkled judici- 
ously and fall, ' like the gentle rain from heaven,' upon the devoted 
head of the surprised recipient. If the victim started and, 
glancing up at the heavens, prepared to unfurl an umbrella, gi'eat 
was the triumph of the unseen onlookers ; but one day the jest 
was carried too far. Evelyn, armed with a squirt and guarded 
by Spencer who acted as sentinel, hid behind the creeper on the 
balcony. Soon she espied a man coming down the street whose 
self-complacency seemed to call for drastic treatment. He was 
wearing pale grey trousers, white spats and shiny boots, a 
faultless grey top hat, a white button-hole and lavender kid 




Panel of six tiles, representing a long-necked bottle with roses, the bottle Itself 

being decorated with turquolse-blue Howers on a dark blue ground. 

Height 24 inches. Width 16 inches. 

[At the Victoria & Albert Museum, LondOfi 



THE STORY OF THE PICKERINGS 151 

gloves ; his walk was conceited and his air of self-satisfaction 
was aggressive. 

Directly he was within range, she took aim, and with a well- 
directed ' squirt ' sent a shower upon the fop below and bobbed 
o\it of sight. She heard an exclamation, followed by a pause, 
and then a ring at the front-door vibrated with ominous signi- 
ficance through the house. In a sudden panic she tied to the 
nursery, while her drenched victim below demanded furiously 
to see 'the lady of the house.' Mrs. Pickering, on being told 
what had happened, in some alarm refused to go down, and 
sent the head nurse Loutitt, a responsible Scottish body, to 
pacify the injured stranger, and, incidentally, to dry him. But 
he would accept no apology. 

' Such behaviour is a scandal ! ' he protested ; ' I insist on 
seeing the boy who acted in this manner that I may give him a 
lesson he will not forget.' * It was no boy,' responded the nurse 
firmly, ' but our young leddy. She will be doing the things she 
should not ! ' But the stranger insisted that this was not the 
truth — he had seen a boy upon the balcony, and unless he could 
have every assurance that that obnoxious boy should be flogged, 
he would fetch the police. At length the nurse, in self-defence, 
sent for Evelyn, and when a particularly gentle and pretty- 
mannered little girl entered, and admitted that it was she who 
had wantonly damaged his top hat, the stranger appeared dis- 
concerted ; he blustered more feebly, and soon, with some mild 
admonitions to her not to indulge again in that particular form 
of recreation, he seized his damp headgear and took his departure. 

Apparently as a result of this untoward incident, one form of 
entertainment in which the children had delighted was banned 
by the nurses. Before the days when orthodox drawing-lessons 
were instituted as part of the school-room routine, they had been 
given little boxes of paints Mdth which they began to draw and 
colour crude pictures. The mess which they made, however, 
with the tinted water, and the consequent damage to their 
clothes, was seized upon by the powers which ruled in the nursery 
as an excuse to forbid an otherwise harmless occupation ; and 
in order to enforce compliance with this prohibition, all water- 
bottles and jugs were placed beyond the reach of small arms 

Evelyn, however, who had found the amusement congenial, 
was determined not to be thwarted in this manner. She there- 
fore provided herself with a doll's tea-pot, and when she went 
out for a walk with the nurses she lagged behind and hurriedly 
stole water from the gutters or puddles with which, in secret, 
she contrived to pursue her amusement unsuspected. A few 
of these early attempts at Art have survived — some flowers 
cleverly drawn and some spirited figures in vivid garments ; 
but these are not more remarkable than similar attempts by other 



152 EVELYN DE MORGAN 

girls of her age. What is of interest to note is the determination 
of so small a child and the patient persistence with which she 
achieved her object in spite of opposition. This must have been 
all the more diftkult because of the extreme vigilance with which 
she and her brothers were guarded when out walking at that 
date. There had for some time been a great scare caused by the 
frequent cases of child-stealing which had occurred. Children 
had been kidnapped with diabolical cleverness and kept for a 
reward, or in more tragic instances had disappeared and been 
heard of no more. So alarmed, therefore, had Mr. Pickering 
become at the recurrence of this crime that he always had a 
nurse a-piece for each of his children, and all were well drilled 
in the necessity for closely guarding their charges — from the 
staid head-nurse, before mentioned, to a prototype of the De 
Morgans' ' Janey ' of twenty years earlier — a pretty, younger 
Jane, who at the age of sixteen entered a service wiiich she never 
afterwards quitted. 



CHAPTER VII 

PEN-DRIFT 

{To he omitted by the captious) 

IN studying the psychology of a child, and striving to trace 
the source of its ultimate development, one inevitably seeks 
the clue in its first halting attempts at self-expression. For as 
the greater events of Life hinge on trivialities, so the growth of 
mentality seems equally a sequence of Chance — a perplexing 
tangle of Cause and Effect — in which heredity and environment 
are eternally dominating some erratic hazard of the die. 

Of late, however, so much attention has been directed to 
the effusions of youthful authors and poets — most of whom in 
after-life belied their early promise — that one hesitates to add 
to the number. Yet a peep into the mind of a very young child 
is not without amusement, and a few quotations, unexpur gated 
in spelling and diction, may be given, since the reader who so 
prefers can, without loss of consecutiveness in the context, 
leave this entire chapter unread. 

To Evelyn, a restless child teeming with imagination which 
had as yet found no adequate outlet, the idea of venting her 
thoughts on paper first came through an unexpected channel, 
and was eagerly adopted. 

In the back drawing-room of the house in Upper Grosvenor 
Street was a large china bowl filled with little scrolls of parch- 
ment yellow with age, tied by coloured ribbons. Each of these 
contained a ' Fate ' in verse, written in a fine, pointed hand by 
some ingenious ancestor. Visitors attracted by the sight of 
these tiny scrolls would dip their hands into the bowl and read 
their ' fortune ' in prim, old-fashioned verse. ' They give people 
something to talk about when we are waiting for dinner ! ' Mrs. 
Pickering used to say if anyone asked her about these scrolls, 
and once she appended a story in this connexion which impressed 
itself on Evelyn's imagination. 

Going to a dinner-party one night, she noticed the drawing- 
room table to be dotted about with strange penny toys and 
cheap wooden figures — whereupon her hostess, observing her 
glance at these queer ornaments, explained their use. ' Men,' 

153 



154 EVELYN DE MORGAN 

she said, ' never know what to do with their hands 1 I usually 
have nice ivories and knick-knacks on my table ; but when I 
have a dinner-party I put them all away. If there is anything 
l5dng about, so surely the men will toy and fiddle with it till they 
break it. I lately had a valuable ivory destroyed that way, 
and the man never even noticed that he had snapped it in two ! 
Now I put about these little rubbishes, and you will see that 
they answer my purpose.' And so it befell that directly some 
men arrived at that dinner-party, first one and then another, 
idling near the table, picked up the penny knick-knacks and, 
without noticing what these were, absently twisted and turned 
and toyed with them, while Mrs. Pickering and her hostess 
exchanged amused glances ! 

Possibly the crowded centre-table which figured in all draw- 
ing-rooms at that date offered an element of temptation, since 
eliminated, to the Victorian diner-out ; but the mysterious, Scrolls 
of Fate in the bowl became a source of interest, not unmixed with 
awe, to Evelyn ; and apparently, having grasped their value as 
conversation-providers at social functions, she determined to 
manufacture some duplicates on her own account. In a small 
ivory box are still the little rolls of paper inscribed by her with 
verses in a babyish hand ; but surprised spinsters, testing 
futurity at her invitation, must have felt that the information 
furnished was unexpectedly decisive. One roll, with an air of 
relentless finality, proclaims : — 

' Cast on a desert Island thou shalt be 
And canibles shall come and devour thee ! ' 

While another contains a grave warning against erudition 
carried to excess : — 

' Crammed full of knowledge thou shalt burst 
For craving to become the first.' 

A third, indeed, suggests a sop to vanity : — 

' A thousand sutors shall for thee sigh 
But in a Convent thou shalt dye ! ' 

But though expiring in a Convent might be rendered more 
exhilarating by the thought of those thousand unhappy suitors 
sighing vainly without the walls, apart from consolations such 
as these, all the prognostications have a sinister note ; even those 
which contain a faint element of gaiety temper it \\dth a counter- 
blast of disaster to foUow. 

' In the ball-room dance away 
For thy life is short and gay 1 ' 



PEN-DRIFT 155 

is scarcely a suggestion conducive to rendering a ball more 
enjoyable ; while even the most cheerful of the series hints at 
the hollowness of seeming bliss : — 

' With beauteous face and empty hart 
In the world thou' 11 bear thy part 1 * 

is a prophecy which, although not explicit in its indication of 
exactly what part its victim was to play, at least successfully 
conveys a sense of false merriment with an aching void beneath ! 
None the less, it was these foolish little ' Scrolls of Fate ' 
which first suggested to the child the notion of trying to give 
some concrete form to the drifting fancies of her brain. Subse- 
quently verses, plays and short stories poured from her pen, 
together with unfinished ' novels,' usually abandoned after the 
first few chapters for some newer idea or plot. Each attempt 
at fiction has an introductory preface, a solemn dedication, and 
an appropriate verse of unmitigated gloom. All show the same 
characteristic — an inability to spell the simplest words and a 
greater accuracy when penning big ones — indicative of recourse 
to a dictionary where this was understood by the small writer 
to be imperative. A copy-book, bearing the title The Child's 
Own Fairy-Book, written at the age of eight, opens as follows : — 

PREFACE 

' My object in writing this book is for the amusemefit of children between 
six and seven years old, and I greatly hope that with the help of my brother 
Mr. Spencer Pickering [then aged five], who has been so kind as to allow me 
to dedicate this book to him, I may be able to succeed.'' 

And the tale which follows, written by a child, herself half 
faery, half sprite, is full of quaint and dainty fancies, an odd 
mingling of the material and the ethereal, and of many a way- 
ward conceit which surely afterwards matured into the pictures 
that she painted. Of the Fairies' Palace she writes : — 

' First of all I must tell you about there Palace, it was a beautiful 
bilding composed entirely of diamonds, and was lined inside with emeralds. 
There were an hundred rooms in it not including the great Hall (for I 
supose you know that fairys hve in comunities and that every comunity 
has its Queen). There beds were made of gold and lined with the softest 
Ider down. There was too a book which was held most dear to them and 
was kept by their Queen Graciocia, it was called the Dumet. This Dumet 
contained all the Fairy's reites and cerimonies, and also all they had the 
right to do. Now all Fairys have spectacels without glasses and made 
of diamond wire and called slumes which they always wore but which 
when on you never can discern, with these wires they can see all invisibel 
things, and also if they have them on, they can become visibel or invisibel 
just as the chouse. . . .* 



156 EVELYN DE MORGAN 

And one finds oneself wondering whether the little writer 
herself wore slumes which enabled her to see so much beauty in 
the world around not ' visibel ' to others. But alas ! in the 
story the wonderful Fairy Palace with its diamond exterior and 
emerald ' lining ' vanishes all too abruptly to be explained away 
by the following sententious note : — 

' The preceding fairy-tale was begun at an early age hut was unfortunately 
never terminated as the authoress was called to more pressing duties.' 

This effort is immediately followed in the same copy-book by 
a more ambitious work, which announces itself to be Nora de 
Brant : a Novel ; and which also has a preface as follows : — 

PREFACE 

' Feeling the want of recreation books for the young the authoress has 
entered the lists with so many of her country-women to endeavour to"suply 
the young folks of the present day with amusing and at the same time insiructif 
tales and though some may smile at the idea of anything instructif being 
contained in a novel, the authoress hopes to prove that it is by no means 
impossible. 

' M. E. P.' 

Next follow verses, portending tragedy to come, and then the 
story begins : — 

' Beautifully situated amoungst the w-ild mountains of Westmoorland 
Braiesford Hall raised its proud Wals to the admiring eye and seemed 
contenptiously to behold from afar the little vilage of Braiesford with its 
humble cottages and its pretty little country Church, its vilage green were 
the Children were wont to play when school was over and all its rural 
sceenes as it peacefully lay in the vally below. Braiesford Hall had long 
been in the posesion of the de Brants the family boasted of their ancestry, 
and could trace their pedigree back to the time of the quonquest, and had 
received the grant of Braiesford lands from Herrie the eight in the year 
1511. 

' The present Mr. de Brant was a young man who had not yet attained 
his thirtieth year his father had unfortunately died from a fall from his 
hoarse when he was very young and he had thus become heir to the Braies- 
ford estate at the early age of ten. Accustomed to have everything his 
own way, to be made much of by everyone, with an indulgent mother, who 
knew not how to say No ! and with almost everything he could wish for 
at his disposal, the spoilt child grew up to be a selfish pasionate man who 
could not bare to be contradicted in the slightest tiling. His mother died 
shortly after he had come of age, and his two sisters, Jane and IMageret, 
who were some years older than himself, prefered living in a small house 
near London than remaining at the hall, as he proposed they should. 

' About the time when our story begins it was rumoured in the vilage 
that the Squire had a Lady Love up in the great City, and it certainly 
looked very like it for he was never to be found at the hall, if anyone 
inquired after him the pondered footman was sure to answer with a 
profound bow that his Master was in London and that the last thing they 
had heard of him was (and here Mr. Jhon would give a captavating smile) 



PEN-DRIFT 157 

that he was in perfect health. Many and Many were the conjectures 
made by the inquisitive vilagers.but they all agreed in one point that was 
namely that Mr. Jhon knew something about the matter, and though 
Suzanna Mairy, the prittiest girl in the vilags set to work to discover all 
about it, she was bafied at the first onset, foi alas her shining curls and 
best bonnet seemed to have no efect on the iron heart of IVIr. Jhon, for he 
merely grined and shook his curly whig and replied that " his Master had 
gone to towTi on business " so poor Suzanna had to give up the case as 
quite hopeless, but the curiosity of the vilagers was soon to be gratyfied 
for not long after the news reached Braiesford that the Squire had been 
married in London and that he and his bride would pass the night at the 
Hall as they proceeded on their marraige tour in Scotland. 

' We will not dwell upon the bustle of preparations that imidiatly 
took place for the reception of the bride, nor upon the expectations of the 
old gossips as they sat over their sociable cups of tea and wondered what 
Madam would be like, but will at once pass to the next day when, about 
six o'clock in the evening, the sound of hoarse" s hoofs were heard in the 
distance and in an instant the road was lined with the egar vilagers who 
were anxious to catch a glimpse of the bride as the carraige drove rapidly 
along and passed under the triumphal ach which had been erected at the 
entrance of the vilage the people gave three loud cheers. The Squire 
kept bowing and smiling at the window but not one glimpse of his lady 
did the disopointed vilagers get, as she was tow tired to do anything 
but lay languidly back on the cushioned seat. As they drove up the 
broad carraige drive that led to the Hall Mr. de Brant bade his wife looli 
at her future home expressing a hope that she was satisfied with it she 
replied in the affirmatif but seemed too weary to pay much attention to 
anything. 

' But it is time that I should introduce you to the newly married 
couple it is an old saying and one that is generaly acted upon that ladies 
ought to come before Gentlemen, but I mean to brak through every sense 
of propriety and good maners and begin with the Gentleman : — ' 

Whereupon the writer at once proceeds to describe Mervyn 
de Brant as ' a tall substantial-looking man ' who considered 
himself ' the most important personage in the universe ' and 
whose temper was uncertain as he was ' pasionate beyond 
mcsure.' His wife whom he had just married at ' St. George's, 
Hannover Square,' wore an enormous ' cheegnon ' and was ex- 
ceedingly haughty, principally, it seems, because her father had 
been killed at the Battle of Waterloo. This being so, apart from 
the little interest which she took in the first sight of her new 
home, she proceeded to flout the old servants who were assembled 
to greet her on her arrival and who, including the ' captavating 
Mr. Jhon,' took great offence at the airs of herself and her lady's 
maid, by name ' Mrs. Struttings.' Hence occurred the first 
matrimonial tiff between the newly married couple. The story 
relates : — 

' Mr. de Brant was by no means pleased with his wife's conduct towards 
the servants, and therefore in the first spare moment he reproaved her 
mildly for the want of afferbihty in her manner. 

' " Indeed Mervyn " was the haughty rejoinder, " I could not have 



158 EVELYN DE MORGAN 

believed it of you the idea of your expecting me to shake hands and make 
much of the domestics ! " 

' " I did not mean to oUcnd you," retorted Mr. De Brant, " but then you 
see, my dear Gertrude, the servants here are not hkc your mother's and 
are not used to such treatment as you gave them tliis evening and I am 
aflraid that they will take it ill." 

' " They must learn to take nothing amiss that / choose to give them," 
was the answer, accompanied with a proud toss of the head. 

' Mr. de Brant took no notice of this last speech of Gertrude's, but 
merely said, as he took up his candle and prepared to leave the room, 
" The carriage is ordered at nine to-morrow morning and we must start 
punctually." 

' " That is to say if I choose to go ! " was the reply. Mr. de Brant 
made no answer but went out slaming the door violently after him and 
strode upstairs in no very pleasant frame of mind. 

' The next morning they started for Scotland, but it is not my intention 
to follow them on their plescnt and amusing tour and as we have the 
privilage of skipping over a month or so at our pleasure we will do so on 
the present occasion and turn at once to the time whene Mr. and Mrs. de 
Brant returned and took up their stationary abode at the Hall. 

' Things went on pretty quietly on the whole with occasional little 
outbraks, Gertrude going her way and her husband his, now and then 
their comeing in collision with each other, and so the first year of their 
married life passed tolerably smoothly. 

' The next object of important to which I shall call your attention is 
to the birth of a little son which greatly delighted Mr. de Brant and who 
was christened ' 

But apparently the effort of finding a suitable title for that 
son and heir to the lands inherited from the ' quonquest ' gave 
pause to the inspiration of the young writer, for the ' stationary ' 
life of the de Brants comes to an abrupt termination, and in a 
slightly older hand-writing the authoress has added senten- 
tiously : — 

' This novel begun at an early age was unfortunately never terminated as 
the author was at that period so fully occupied with poetical and dramatic 
compositions, that no time was left for the more humble prose.^ 

Nevertheless, in her school-room compositions, the ' humble 
prose ' still survived, and caused some dismay to those who had 
to deal with it. Her Parisian daily governess, a prim and de- 
corous lady, at first used to set her as a task to be prepared out 
of lesson-hours, some original correspondence in French, and 
rashly left the subject to her pupil's own selection, ' Que peut 
on faire avec une telle enfant ? ' she exclaimed later as she placed 
in Mrs. Pickering's hands the following result. 

Monsieur U Marquis de Valhe d Madame la Marquise de 

VaUse. 

' Paris, Mars 6me. 
' CiiliRE ErousE, — 

' Je ne sais comment commen9ea cette lettre, j'ai tant de choses ^ 
tc dire, ct j'ai bien pcur de tc fdcher ; mais pour me douner la force qu'il 



PEN-DRIFT 159 

me faut, je m'imaginerai que tes jolies Idvxes me sourient en disant " Con- 
tinue , Continue, — je te pardonnerai tout / " Et cette pens<Se, chere 6pouse, 
m'encourage k t'avouer une petite maladresse de ma part. 

' L'autre soir je suis aller chez Monsieur le Dindonbare. Au moment 
de me retirer il me dit — " Oil allez vous ? " Je lui repondit que j'allais 
rentrer '■-hez moi. " Passez la soir6e tout seul ? " me dcmanda il. " Oui," 
dis-je, " il le faut bien, puisque ma femrae n'est pas avec moi." " Est 
ce qu'il vous faut tou jours votre femme pour vous tenir compagnie ? " 
dit-il, " Venez avec moi, mon cher, et je vous trouverez de bien meilleur 
compagnie que celle de Madame votre femme ! " 

' " Monsieur," repondis je, " pour que me prenez vous, que vous 
m'irsultd comme cela k mon nez ? " " Pardon," reprit-il, en tirant ses 
moustaches, et en saluant, " je riais, car en verity je trouve Madame de 
Valdse la dame la plus agr^able du monde, et je voulais simplement vous 
proposer de m'acompagner a la salle de billard ou je vais, pour vous faire 
oblier vos peines vous devez en avoir en quittant une personne aussi 
aimable que votre femme Test, pendant quelqucs heures a ce jeux inno- 
cent." Je lui repondis que ce n'6tait pas dans mes principles de frequenter 
les salles de Billard. " Oh, je comprends," dit il avec un sourire dedaig- 
neux, " quand on est pauvre il faut 6tre econome — vous avez raison, mon 
cher ! " Maintenant, je te demande, chere epouse, pouvais-je me laisser 
insulter comme cela — c"6tait risquer mon honneur et le sien de ne pas lui 
montrer que je n'avais pas peur dc perdre quelque sous ! et en pensant 
ainsi je Taccompagnai comme il Tavait demande. 

' Au commencement tout alia bien, et je gagnai k chaque tour ; cela 
m'encouragea k jouer de plus haut en plus haut, mais Dame Fortune, 
toujours capricieuse, me quitta soudaincmcnt pour favoriser mes adver- 
saires et je perdis tout ce que j'avais gagne, et encore bien daVantage. 
J'6tais desol6, mais on me dit qu'il fallait revenir le lendemain pour regagner 
ce que j'avais perdu. Je suivis leur avis, mais au lieu de gagner, je perdis 
comme auparavant ; on me encouragea toujours avec I'esp^rance de 
gagner, en revenant de jour en jour, mais h^las ! je perdis d'enornies 
sommes d'argcnt chaque soir. Et que suis-je aujourd'hui ? un homme 
ruin6 ! oui ! ruin6, chere 6pouse, car je dois plus de cent mille francs, a 
chaque pas que je fais je vois la ruine. 

' Mes cr^anciers, autrefois si obligeants, sont a present^ insatiables 
pour leur argent. En effet, cher epouse, je ne vois qu'un chemin k prendre, 
et c'est celle-ci. II faut que tu renvois toutes les domestiques du Chateau, 
Juliette et Bernard except^. II faut vendre tes chevaux et tous les 
chiens de chasse ; et puis j'ai une petite chose k te demander, chere Spouse, 
tu sais ton collier de diamands, et bien, ne voudras tu pas le vendre ])our 
I'amour de ton mari ? c'est un sacrifice j'cn conviens, mais du rests je te 
promets que si jamais je deviens riche je t'en donnerai un autre. Mais 
pour le present je connais un bon Juif qui achetera volontiers ton collier, — 
envois le lui. II demeure 45 rue . . . Paris. 

' Et maintenant, chdre Spouse, il faut que je te dise adieu. Ecris 
bientot et pardonne moi de ce que je I'ait fait, ne sois dure pour moi, et 
pense que ton mari k tout fait pour le mieux. Je t'embrasse de tout mon 
^oeur et ie suis toujours ton fidiJle, mais malhaureux, epoux. 

' Alexis de Val£;se.' 

RSponse 

' Monsieur, — 

' Je trouve que votre petite maladresse en est une bien grande. Et 
je vous disai — " Monsieur, que votre imagination vous a tromp6, car mes 
jolies levres ne s'ouvriront que pour vous dire des imprecations. En 



i6o EVELYN DE MORGAN 

verity, vous 6tes fou ; une dame de quality sans domestiques ! je croii 
que vous avez laiss6 votre t6te, comme votre argent, k la Salle de billard 
Ne comptez pas sur mes diamants pour payer vos dettes car vous ne lei 
aurez pas, ni votre " bon Juif " non plus. Ne vous presentez pas devani 
mes yeux, car je vous previens qu'ils n'ont pas plus de piti6 pour vous qut 
mes Ifivres. 

' Je suis Monsieur, votre 6pouse furieuse et indignde. 

' Angelique de Valise,' * 

Tc 'Xie average child, humour of a primitive type alone is 
comprehensible ; its laughter is stirred by trifles which make no 
appeal to its elders, while it will treat what to them is ludicrous 
with a profound seriousness. But the sense of wit in a child is 
rare, and is likely to be fraught with inconvenience to its pastors 
and masters. Thus it is doubtful whether the matter-of-fact 
English governess was better pleased than her French prototype 
when she, too, having suggested an original composition in her 
native tongue, her pupil, with assumed gravity, presented her 
with a Dantesque description in blank verse of ' Pluto's drear 
domain.' This gave an ail-too graphic picture of a world shrouded 
in eternal fog, permeated with a foetid odour and conspicuous, 
for snakes which writhed, skeletons which groaned, phantoms 
which howled and wailed, and lakes of gore ! 

As to the ' dramatic and poetical compositions ' in which the 
child indulged privately, their variety is endless, though of these 
the most ambitious are likewise the best, and are too long to 
quote. All, however, exhibit a happy knack of phraseology, of 
vivid description, of close observation and appreciation of beauty 
in the world around. But they reveal, too, an unexpected 
undercurrent of sadness mingled with an attraction to the 
gruesome in life, almost morbid in its intensity. 

Pessimism is admittedly a phase of youth ; there is an age 
at which we all write verses and hug discontent. It is as though 
to the young and healthy the mystery of that darker side of life 
with which they are still unacquainted attracts with all the 
force of a fantastic contrast — there is a luxury in melancholy to 
which they cling in thought. Still more do all stirrings of genius, 
all aspiration, all ultimate achievement, find their root in this 
acceptance of sadness as one of the great adjuncts of life. ' Be- 
lieve me,' said Colehurst to Mary Crockenden, ' that all the 
noblest thought, noblest work, noblest friendship is rooted and 
grounded in profound sadness. Sad — everything's sad — fair 
things and foul things alike.' 

It may be some dim realization of this truth which makes the 
appeal of soitow to a mind that has never tasted its actuality ; 
yet there are those of us who have suffered more keenly from the 

^ A few corrections to the grammar in the above, apparently made 
by the Governess, have been allowed to stand in order that the French 
tnav be more intelligible to the reader ; othenvise'the original is untouched. 




The Daughters of the Mist 
Evelyn De Morgan pin'xit 

[In the possession of Mrs. Spevcer Pickering. 



PEN-DRIFT i6i 

visionary griefs and terrors of our early days than is possible in 
later life when we face reality with a sense of proportion and a 
philosophy that childhood lacked. 

As will have been gathered, no home could have been more 
free from gloom than the sunny house in Upper Grosvenor Street, 
and no child less weighted with the sorrows of existence than was 
Evelyn ; yet with the perversity of an imaginative tempera- 
ment, aU that was the antithesis to her own lot appealed most 
keenly to her in those early years. Thus if she describes a scene 
of lovers wandering in a grove, of children playing in the sun- 
light, of flowers blossoming on the bank of a silver stream in 
spring-time — though she docs so with a lightness and grace 
unusual in a child, she dwells, too, with insistence on the thought 
of how Death is hovering near to pounce on these lovely living 
things at their moment of suprcmest bliss. So, also, when she 
turns to Nature, what attracts her is the awful solitude of some 
lonely mountain peak, the mysterious depths of some eerie 
forest, the rattle of the thunder, the roar of the tempest over a 
rocking sea, or some dank ruin, frightening in its silence, with its 
breath of present decay and its whisperings of a ghostly Past. 

* In the pale moonlight, cold and dim 
Stands the lone ruin, drear and grim ; 
Lichens creep o'er the crumbling walls. 
The dark bat haunts the silent halls ; 
Death is heralded by decay 
Through darkening night, and brightening day. . » »• 

There is a lilt in the verses which runs through the descrip- 
tions of the same scene under varying phases — especially in the 
winter : — 

' Then the wild hail-storm hoarsely rings 
Death is the doom of earthly things 1 * 

Even when a passage occurs of obvious bathos, this — like 
the uncertain spelling — serves to mark what we might otherwise 
be in danger of forgetting, the extreme youth of the writer and 
the consequent need for leniency in criticism. Most of her 
verses, it must be observed, were written about the age of nine 
— none after the age of thirteen ; and they are given here only 
to illustrate the character-study of a child with undeveloped 
faculties, but teeming with imagination and— so much may be 
conceded -possessed of an unusual fluency of language. Per- 
haps for unadulterated gloom, the verses in which she describes 
the sensations of a murderer and of his victim are the most 
typical — indeed various poems deal with this topic, which 'was 
evidently a favourite one. 

L 



i62 EVELYN DE MORGAN 



* A prisoner lay in a gloomy cell. 

With the chains around him clinging 

Watching the shadows that deep'ning fell 

And despair his heart was wringing. 



' He knew the doom that awaited him well. 
For conscience his heart was stirring, 
Repeating that when on the scaflold he fell 
'Twould be Justice — crimes avenging. 

3 

' His guilty thoughts cast a drearful spell 
O'er the dim light all surrounding ; 
He fancied a murdered form he could telj 
From the darkness slow emerging. 

4 

• The shape which his fancy had beckon'd forth 

In a bloody pall was shrouded, 
From its vacant sockets, the flames of wrath 
With revengeful fury darted. 

5 

* Its horrid features with gore were streaming. 

And no sound the enchantment broke. 
Till at last, its spectre frame erecting. 
With an accent of rage it spoke 



• " Hark ! murderer, who mads't my spirit fly 

Down a prayerless path to Judgment, 
In the place where fiery seas roll high 
There's an endless pit of torment. 

7 

* " There tortures await thee in angry shape. 

Which thy fetter' d ghost shall endure, 
From that region of pains there is no escape, 
Eternity hath thee secure 1 

8 

* " 'Tis there in that land of bitterest woe 

That vengeance shall fan my hot soul. 
And the flaming billows that o'er thee flow 
Shall rejoice me beyond control 1 " 

9 

• The fantome vanished with mocking howl. 

But the prisoner never moved ; 
And the night stole in wiih a darksome scowl 
WTiich the stillness vainly reproved. 



PEN-DRIFT 163 

10 

• With the early morn the grim geolier flingfs 
Wide open the prison's drear door. 
The sentence of death in his hand he brings— 
But the captif Ues dead on the dungeon floor I * 

It must be admitted, so unpleasant is the disposition of the 
ghost who, as it forcibly complains, was sent — 

' Down a prayerless path to Judgment ' 

that one's sympathies are enlisted on behalf of the ' captif ' 
whom it maliciously haunts and taunts. But in the next ven- 
ture there is little to choose between the conduct of murderer 
and murdered, since their respective roles are transposed directly 
one is no longer in the flesh. 



* See the ocean, calmly sleeping, 

Glitters 'neath the sun's hot ray ; 
Swift a little bark is sckimming 
On its smooth and easy way. 



* All alone two sailors sitting 

Row across the dreamy deep ; 
One of treachery is thinking, 
And his murdrous vigils keep. 

3 

' Money that the other's bearing 
To the not far-distant shore 
Tempts him, and the dagger plunging 
Bids his victim hve no more. 

4 

* List the corpse so drearly sinking 

In the peaceful rip'ling sea, 
Calls for vengeance, and awakening 
Nature answers to the plea. 

5 

* Hark how wild the storm is thrilling I 

Bright the hghtning scans the sky. 
Dark the thunder-clouds are rolling. 
Roaring swells the water high. 



* On the billows roughly tossing 
At the mercy of the storm, 
In the fated boat hard rowing 
Sits the frighted murd'rer's form. 



i64 EVELYN DE MORGAN 



• High before him, gloomy towering 
Stands the saving rocky shore ; 
But to reach it, vainly struggling. 
Doomed, he hears the tempest roar* 

8 

' See a spectre grim arising 

From the white and feath'ry spray. 
With a bloody halo gleaming 
Round his gory locks astray. 



f With revenge its eyes are glist'ning 
Gazing on the battling bark ; 
And astride the waves it's riding 
While the scene grows still more dark. 

ID 

* Terror now the murd'rer seizing 

Makes him row with all his might ; 
But the restless ghost advancing 
Drags him down to lasting night 1 * 

Another poem describes the sensations of a criminal flying 
from his own haunted imagination and how he seeks in vain for 
peace in every possible locality, till finally — 

' He stands upon a rocky ledge 
A swelling torrent rolls below ; 
He leaps from ofE the craggy edge 
And Death conceals his tale of woe ! ' 

The call of the sea rings through most of her verses ; and 
later in life she used to say that no holiday inland was of any 
ase to her, so keenly did she hunger for the tonic to brain and 
nerve which she found in the dancing waves and the brine- 
irenched air. The following with its mingling of gory ghosts and 
a. stormy ocean is also characteristic. 



' Oh I Mother hark, how the -wind howleth loud ; 
See, swift o'er the sky flits the darken'd cloud, 
And the roar of the waves so grand and proud 

The coming storm foretells. 
The sea-gull stoops on her silvery wings, 
To the watchful sailors the warning brings. 
The crested billows the alarum rings — • 
Higher the warter [sic] swells. 



PEN-DRIFT 165 



* Oh ! Mother hark to the booming gun, 
Mornful the sounds o'er the ocean come. 
Some vessel must on the rocks have run ; 

She calls for help in vain. 
Her knell is the thunder's distant roar ; 
The signals are hushed for evermore, 
And the surges break where she lay before ; 
A wreck floats on the main ! 

3 

' Oh 1 Mother hark to the voice of the storm ; 
It conjures up many a shadowy form 
That the living have long since ceased to mourn. 

To ride on the gloomy wave. 
And visions of heroes, grim and gory. 
Haunt the deep with their woeful story ; 
And the white foam forms their crown of glory, 

Down in their wartery grave.' 

Perhaps one of the most imaginative of these productions is 
the tale of a lost child whirled away by the Spirit of the Light- 
ning. No stress need be laid upon the closeness with which the 
child who wrote it had studied the moods of Nature to describe 
them so faithfully. 



' See the golden sunset fading 

Into ev'ning's darksome shades. 
And the night damps slowly creeping 
Through the forest's hidden glades. 



' Hark the lost one, loudly weeping. 
Calls in vain for friendly aid. 
None to hear and, gently guiding. 
Homeward lead the drooping maid. 

3 

' Silence now o'er all is brooding. 

And the pines wave drear on high. 
Gold-fringed clouds are quickly flitting 
O'er the sullen threat'ning sky. 

4 
' List how wild the storm !s brewing ; 
Hear the thunder's distant roar ; 
Through the woody mazes wand'ring 
Strays the child, lone, worn and sore. 

5 

* Lo the Spirit, gaily riding 

On its flashing lightning -^teed, 

Stoops, and quick the girl uplifting 

Hurries on with mad-like speed. 



i66 EVELYN DE MORGAN 

6 

* Far behind the woodlands leaving 

Swift they scour the Heaven's dark brow. 
Then, with sudden fury turning, 
On the earth they Ughten now. 

7 

* In the cities fear arousing 

As they rend the gloomy pall 
Which the sleeping, soft, is shrouding, 
Wakening to the tempest's call. 

8 

O'er the desert widely ranging. 
Flashing on its sandy planes, 

Far o'er unknown wilds advancing 
Where drear desolation reigns. 

9 

' Hark the ocean billows raging, 

Shouting loud their triumph song. 
As the vsTecks, sad witness bearing 
To their vict'ry, drift along. 



•On the foaming pathways glancing 
Urging on the fir'y [sic) horse 
See the riders swiftly flashing 

O'er the sailor's wave-toss'd corse. 



' Drear the scene — ^the tempest howling 
Greets the phantom's gladdened ear-— 
But the moments onward wearing 
Bid the ling'ring dawn appear. 

12 

• See the pale grey streaks are spreading 

Heralding the coming day ; 
On their breath an angel floating 
Clothed in glorious array. 

13 

• Lo, of Peace the banner raising. 

Calm, she lulls the restless sea ; 
While the hurrican abating 

Fright' ed, makes the Spectre flee. 

14 

• See those cloud-barred gates that opening 

Show the awful sights within. 
Lakes of flame high inward rolling 
Curling smoke, and deaf'ning din 1 




H z 3 



Q c ft 

iJ 3 O 



&T3 



c — 









Pi2 



PEN-DRIFT 167 

•Now the fork-legged courser, starting. 
Panting snorts the murky air ; 
Vain the Spirit madly struggling 
— Both are doom'd to enter there. 

16 

* Feel its tightened hold relaxing 

As it drops the trembling child ; 
See its hideous form that, fighting. 
Flounders in that chaos wild. 

17 

* Now those drearsome portals closing 

Hide that place of woe from sight, 
Till, when next the doors unfolding, 
All shall aid the whirlwind's flight. 

18 

* Angel forms are brightly beaming 

Thronging in the dewy morn. 

Floods of glory lightly blending 

With the sober tints of dawn. 

19 
' Light the little maiden bearing 
Resting on their gorgeous wings. 
While the scented breeze that's playing 
Echoes of sweet music brings. 



' See the golden visions breaking 

On the child's large, wond'ring eyes. 
Shouts of joy that, never ceasing. 
Welcome her beyond the skies 1 ' 

Despite the halting metre and the obvious bathos of certain 
lines, noticeably where the lost child is described as ' lone, worn 
and sore,' there is a verve and swing about this little poem which 
holds the attention. One feels the terror of the coming storm, 
the lightning flashing over earth and sky, the muttered thunder, 
the bellowing tempest, and then the contrast of the peaceful 
dawn, with its tinted clouds and scented breezes, heralding the 
angelic welcome to the dead child. Long years afterwards the 
little writer painted a picture called ' The Storm Spirits ' wherein 
Lightning, Cloud and Flood are seen by the gleam of a fitful 
moon riding over an angry sea ; and the flame-hued drapery and 
wild beauty of the first Spirit was surely the outcome of those 
childish dreams. 

With like realism, she wrote of the days of Odin, so that when 
she depicts ' Valhalla's mighty halls,' one can hear the uproar as 



i68 EVELYN DE MORGAN 

' The gods and heroes hurry in, To quaff the sparkhng wine,' and 
the sudden lull when Odin bids the feast begin, and they ' drink 
his health in dead men's skulls.' There is, too, the genuine joy 
of battle in the following : — 



' See the snow so thickly falling 

Shrouds the earth in white array; 
Nature waits with dread foreboding 
Twilight of the fatal da>. 

2 

* Now the sun in sinking glory 

Sheds arround its golden light ; 
See advancing, grim and gory, 
Fenris, eager for the fight. 

3 

'Onward like a torrent rushing 
Springs the monster at its prey, 
And the flaming orb devouring 
Thus begins the deadly fray. 

4 
' Next, the moon in silv'ry splendour 
Falls a victime to the foe, 
All the starry heights surrender 
To destruction's gloom below. 

5 

* Hark the tottr'ing mountains tumble, 

Low'ring darkness veils the earth ; 
Rocks from their foundations crumble. 
Wild confusion now takes birth. 

6 

* Now the foaming ocean rolling, 

Breaks with fury past the shore, 
O'er the land unbounded rushing 
Thund'ring with a deafening roar. 

7 

* See the gates of Heaven are op'ning 

Satur comes in fire arrayed. 
Now the Bridge of Bifrost ^ crossing 
Quick the battle ranks are made. 

8 

* Hark ! the Serpent, loudly hissing, 

Coils his giant form in vain, 
Fate's decree that, fiercely bruising, 
Thor shall perish on the plain. 



^ The bridge which spans heaven and earth. In Scandinavian 
Mythology, the rainbow is this bridge, and its colours are attributed to 
the precious stones which bestrew it. 



PEN-DRIFT 169 

9 

• Lo ! the trumpet deeply sounding, 
Heimdal rushes to the strife, 
See Igrasil's ^ boughs are trembhng, 
Woe betiding Odin's hfe. 



* See the streams of blood are welling, 
Odin now his death hath found, 
Wide the caves of Hell are gaping, 
Chaos reigns on all arround I 



* Wild the roaring flames ascending. 
Loud the triumph song of Death 
Air and ocean all-consuming 

With its heated, flaming breath I ' 

' The Sprite of the Bog ' is another poem which shows the 
same love of phantoms, of tempest and of ultimate disaster ; 
while for unadulterated gloom, the ' Tragedy of Virginia,' a 
long play written at the age of ten as a birthday present to the 
dramatist's mother, and bound in lively blue ribbon, surpasses 
the rest in blood-curdling language and dramatic situations. 
More placid in tone, though full of melancholy, is the following : — • 

To THE Swallow. 

* Oh ! bird ever journeying 

Far on the wing, 
To thee doth thy wandering 

Happiness bring ? 
Oh ! tell me, in crossing 

The mighty ocean. 
Do the billows rolling 

In ceaseless motion. 
Of joy to thee whispering 

Urge on thy flight ? 
Or dost thou go sorrowing 

Through darksome night ? 
O'er thy path no hope shedding 

Its brightening ray. 
Thy drear fate bemoaning. 

And cheerless thy way ; 
No soft voice repeating. 

In joyful strain. 
Of the longed-for ending 

Of all thy pain ; 

^ Or Ygsdrasil, the great ash-tree, which in Scandinavian Mythology, 
binds together heaven and earth and hell. Us branches extend over the 
whole earth, its top reaches heaven, and its roots hell. The three Fates 
ait under the boughs spinning the events of Man's life. 



170 EVELYN DE MORGAN 

No star on thee shining 

With friendly Ught, 
Thy flight enUvening 

Ghttering bright ? 
Doth the storm in brooding 

Over the sea, 
And the waters swelUng 

Scowl darkly on thee ? 
Oh ! rather beheving 

Thy silvery wings 
Onward thee bearing 

To ever-bright things, 
N'er knew the sad meaning 

Of Earth's fading scenes, 
Leave me fancying still. 

In fantastic dreams. 
That thy white wings are gleamkig 

A shimmering streak, 
Like a beacon from Heaven 

Where Earth is so bleak ! ' 

Perhaps of all the childish poems, the following, in its quietude 
and simplicity, is the most attractive : — 



' My love lies deep, 
Under the ground, 
And Autumn's gloom 
Is gath'ring round. 



* The ouled ^ flaps 

Her dusky wings ; 
Shadows of night 

The north wind brings. 

3 

* The place is cold. 

And dead leaves lie 
Sadly courting 
The wintry sky. 



4 
' My love was fair. 

Her eyes shone bright. 
They lit my soul 

Like stars the night. 

5 
' He^' locks of hair 

Were bright as gold, 
And her hps breathed 
Deep joys untold ; 

» Owlet. 



PEN-DRIFT 171 

6 

* And o'er my soul 

Her presence beamed. 
And like the sun 

Life-giving gleamed. 

7 

* Come mourn with me 

For I am sad, 
For she is gone 

That made me glad. 

8 

'Wild let me weep 
The hours away. 
Drear is the night 
And drear the day. 

9 

* My heart is broke. 

My hope is fled. 
For lies my love 
Among the dead. 



* My love lies deep 
Under the ground ; 
The winter winds 
Blow cold arround. 



• The cypress tree 

Is crowTied with snow. 
Shrouded in white 
The graves he low. 



'The snow is soft 

And very white ; 

Chill blows the blast 

At dead of night. 

13 

• I will lay me down 

On the cold ground. 
Falling snow-flakes 
Gather arround. . , « 

14 

• Through the wan sky 

A radiance bright 

Gleams o'er the hills ; 

A path of light 1 



173 EVELYN DE MORGAN 

15 

' And a spirit fair, 

Noiseless descending. 
Love, life and peace 
Is gently blending. 

16 

' Oh Love in Glory 
With crowned brow 
I feel thine arms 
Arround me now — 



17 

' Soft thy kisses 

Warm thy breath 
Vision of Love — 
Angel of Death /' 



And again, many years afterwards, the little writer painted 
a picture which seemed to be the outcome of her childish visions. 
It is entitled ' The Angel of Death,' and its haunting charm can 
be conveyed by no colourless reproduction. 

In a lovely land a girl is seen seated upon a rock. Her robe 
is of pink ; her slim figure is outlined against an expanse of golden 
sunset sky. Only in the distance a sinister note is struck in 
that gracious landscape where, afar, beasts of prey are seen 
prowling among the bones of the dead. 

And beside the girl stands the Form of Death himself, one 
finger already outstretched to still the throbbing of her slender 
throat. At his touch she is drooping like a withered flower ; 
her face is waxing pale, her eyes are closed, the bhght of a great 
weariness is upon her . . . and far off the beasts and the birds 
of prey are waiting. 

Yet this Death which is stifling her young breath is no King 
of Terrors. From his enshrouding draperies of wonderful blue 
his face looks out passionless and calm with a beauty which is 
unearthly ; his gaze is bent upon the dying girl with a tenderness 
which is infinite. Relentless it may be ; stern of set purpose 
as befits the instrument of an immovable Fate ; but in its serene 
grace is a tranquilHty which is holy ; for this Angel of Death is 
the Angel of Eternal Peace. 



CHAPTER VIII 
THE THORNY WAY 

FROM the days when Evelyn stole water out of the gutters 
in order to paint, this occupation became more and more 
of an obsession, and still more was it looked at askance by her 
elders. The fact that she began to neglect other branches of 
her education for the study of drawing, and that soon, with the 
exception of music, everything which tore her away from her 
pencil or her brush was resented by her, was noted and lamented. 
While still quite a child, so great became her absorption in what 
was looked upon as a passing mania, that it was feared her 
health would suffer ; and at length, as in nursery days, the 
mandate went forth that she was not to paint, while her drawing- 
master was secretly given instructions to tell her that she had 
no artistic talent, and would be well advised to turn her energies 
in another direction. 

In acting thus, her parents were influenced by dual motives 
— first, the belief that her devotion to Art was not serious ; 
secondly, the fear that it might become so. 

To comprehend their attitude, it is necessary to reconstruct 
the Victorian outlook, already referred to. In a certain section 
of Society at this date Art was viewed with patronizing favour 
— but it was essential that it should be Art kept within proper 
bounds. As a toy of the dilettante, or an accomplishment of 
the well-educated, it was obviously praiseworthy, being an 
intellectual pursuit ; as a serious profession it was another 
matter. Once upon a time Grub Street had fawned upon 
Mayfair, and depended for the very staff of life on the success 
of its fawning. The legend still lingered and extended to other 
products of the intellect besides literature. There was a sus- 
picion — though not formulated in actual words — that painting 
as a profession savoured of a connexion with trade — of work 
which could be bought and sold ; moreover, it was linked with 
a Bohemianism which could not be tolerated in good Society. 
Artists were people who wore long hair and impossible clothes, 
and who affected to admire much that sensible people saw to be 
absurd. The Old Masters were in a different category principally 

173 



174 EVELYN DE MORGAN 

because they were old. They represented the accepted opin'.on 
of generations, and to admire their works must therefore be 
evidence of a cultivated mind. Moreover, the men who had 
painted those chefs-d'cBuvre were dead and had become part of 
History. It did not matter now what had been their social 
status or their idiosyncrasies when alive. 

Baldly expressed, this was the attitude of many Philistines 
of that day ; and even among those who despised the inherent 
snobbishness of such views, it was a force to be reckoned with. 
Evelyn's uncle, Roddam Spencer-Stanhope, had furnished a 
case in point. It mattered nothing that his pictures were like 
exquisite Fairy Tales, that the colour glowed from his canvas 
in radiant loveliness. His choice of a profession was considered 
eccentric by the members of his own family — one to be toler- 
ated, not approved. Reading the correspondence of the period 
one sees that the front of his offence was an impression that it 
had landed him with unconventional acquaintance who held odd 
views about the observance of Sunday ; and it was remarked 
as at least a matter for congratulation that he personally re- 
mained well-groomed and in all externals ' a gentleman.' Never- 
theless, he was referred to as ' poor Roddy,' and his highest 
flights of fancy evoked a smile. His mother — although a clever, 
intellectual woman — made no happier comment on his choice of 
a life-work than was summed up in her fervent exclamation — • 
' Thank God ! it is at least harmless ! ' For the god of the 
Victorians, despite certain contradictions in Biblical history, 
was essentially well-bred. 

Admittedly, these were the traditions of a certain section 
only of the community, but it was, unfortunately, the section 
to which Evelyn belonged. Twenty years earlier, William De 
Morgan had discovered that ' Art, however high on the slopes 
of Parnassus,' was considered ' socially low ' ; and that ' the 
Elite . . . might be amateurs, but not professionals.' The 
passing of years had done little to modify this opinion ; and the 
view that ' Art was altogether unsuited for the son of a Gentle- 
man ' then complained of by him, was, in the present instance, 
accentuated when the daughter of a Gentleman wished to adopt 
it professionally. 

The attitude of Evelyn's mother in regard to the situation 
which thus arose was, she admitted, that of the proverbial 
hen who discovers she has hatched a duckling. ' I want a 
daughter — not an artist ! ' she complained. Not unnaturally 
she wanted a girl to be a companion and a pride to her, one who 
would fulfil the accepted role of the young woman of her day. 
Well-educated, well-read and well-bred, she would, in due course, 
' come out ' in the usual fashion ; she would take part in inno- 
cent pleasures in reaUy good society ; eventually she would 



THE THORNY WAY 175 

marry satisfactorily to become a model wife and mother, and 
finally go down to the grave beloved, revered — and quickly for- 
gotten. This was the destiny mapped out for Evelyn ; and it 
was difficult for her elders to grasp the type of mind which might 
regard such a fate as it appeared to the fiery Bashkirtseff, ' Se 
marier ei avoir des enfants — chaqiie hlanchisseuse pent jaire 
autard ! ' 

So Evelyn, scenting antagonism in the very air she breathed, 
outwardly acquiesced in the verdict of prohibition, while in- 
wardly resolved to defy it. She had by this date been promoted 
from the nursery to a room of her own — a small apartment on 
the floor occupied by her father and mother. This close vicinity 
to her parents was unfortunate in that the smell of paint was 
apt to penetrate through any existing crevices, but she at once 
proceeded to paste up the chinks of the doorways with putty 
and brown paper. Subsequently, she spent many hours in soli- 
tude there ostensibly studying — with the key turned in the lock. 
All evidence of paint or canvas was concealed. At other times, 
if she could escape from the nurses or governesses, she took 
refuge in Grosvenor Square, whither she carried a bag, pre- 
sumably to hold her books. This bag, which also accompanied 
her whenever she went away from London, had been ingeni- 
ously contrived by her with a false bottom, and in this false 
bottom were hidden all the materials requisite for drawing. 

So she worked and studied ; and before the age of twelve 
she was painting in oils. But the results of her labour were 
more difficult to hide than the materials with which she did it, 
and in consequence she utilized every surface which presented 
itself as available for her purpose. She had little pocket money, 
so she secreted blocks of wood to draw upon, or used the insides 
of box-lids, since it was unlikely that anyone would search these 
for drawings. As a further precaution, when working, she 
always had a piece of drapery ready to fling over the parapher- 
nalia which might otherwise have revealed her occupation. 

At length one day the inevitable happened. In her eager- 
ness to get to work she forgot to lock the door, and her mother 
entered before she had time to conceal what she was doing. 
The girl burst into excited tears, and declared she had been 
forced into deception because she could not live without painting. 
After that a virtue was made of necessity, and opposition was 
grudgingly withdrawn. If paint she must, it was better to paint 
well than badly ; so a first-class drawing master was again 
engaged who, for a guinea an hour, condescended to instruct her 
in copying fruit and flowers. Evelyn promptly explained to 
him that what she wanted was to learn the anatomy of human 
beings, not of plants ; but he turned a deaf ear to all her repre- 
sentations, and assured her that the subjects he selected were a 



176 EVELYN DE MORGAN 

more suitable study for a young lady. She thereupon, eager to 
convince him that she was in earnest, purchased a jointed wooden 
model, and from it drew a careful study of the male nude which, 
on his next visit, she firmly submitted for his approval. The 
irate master, scandalized at what he considered a most unlady- 
like proceeding, threw up his post, and Evelyn vented her satis- 
faction by drawing an excellent portrait of him with his head 
bristling with goose-quills. 

An incident occurred about this date which illustrates how 
she regarded everything solely in its relation to Art. One day 
her mother received some tickets for a French play from a well- 
meaning friend, and Evelyn being a remarkably good linguist, 
it was felt that the opportunity for her to follow the dialogue 
in a foreign tongue should not be missed. Unfortunately the 
play proved to be ' French ' in plot as well as language ; and, 
as the risque story unfolded, Mrs. Pickering watched her daughter 
in some anxiety. For the latter sat apparently absorbed in the 
acting, her eyes glued to the stage, her face glowing with excite- 
ment. At length, when the curtain had fallen on the noxious 
performance, Mrs. Pickering, anxious to discover how much of 
its purport the girl had grasped, asked tentatively how she had 
enjoyed it. 

' Oh, enormously ! ' was the heartfelt answer. 

' Could you follow what the actors were saying ? ' pursued her 
mother in some dismay. 

' Oh, I never bothered about thai ! ' was the naive reply ; 
' Just think of their beautiful attitudes and draperies ! ' 

There is a little journal kept by Evelyn at the age of sixteen 
which throws light on her life at that date and how she was 
obsessed by the feeling that every moment wrested from the 
great aim of her existence was an inevocable loss. Written in 
August, which was nominally holiday time, she was then more 
free to follow her own bent. She rose early, and from seven 
onwards painted or drew till the family breakfast at nine 
o'clock. (' Breakfast, as usual, lasted a ceiitury ! ' is one dis- 
consolate entry.) As soon as she could escape, she went off to 
Grosvenor Square, where she worked for three hours in the 
morning, and sometimes, if she was fortunate in getting away, 
for four hours in the afternoon. In the evening, after dinner, 
she modelled, and all other available moments were filled up 
with reading. Yet the record of each day is a perpetual lamen- 
tation at the loss of time entailed by the petty routine of daily 
life, when, to her young enthusiasm, each hour was a treasure 
of which account must be rendered to the great god of Destiny. 
She chafed at the interminable family meals, the intenuption 
of visitors, the evenings when guests to dinner prevented the 
daily modelling. Life, work and art were beckoning — ' and,' 




sculpture 

The Mater Dolorosa 

Evelyn De Morgan fecit 

Exhibited in the Grosvenor Gallery in 1884. 

' A piece of sculpture . . . remarkable for the uncommon beauty of its type and reticent 

-The Studio. 

[In the possession of Mrs. Stirling. 



character of its fine pathos." — The Studio. 



THE THORNY WAY 177 

>he writes, ' I have to sit in the drawing-room and listen to 
idiots talking about dressmakers and servants ! This enforced 
idleness is insupportable.' Still mere, her conscience was per- 
petually goading her with an imaginary laziness. ' Wasted a 
^reat deal of time,' she says self-accusingly on August 15, 
E872, after five hours' steady work ; and the next day she com- 
plains again : ' This is the third day when I have had only half 
a day's work.' On the 17th, after describing eight hours' work, 
she notes a heinous offence : ' At five, went out to tea. Changed 
my dress before going, which was unnecessary and wasted time.' 
The following day she writes : — 

* Saturday, i8th. 
' Half-past seven before I got to work. Worked for only an hour 
before breakfast. Worked three hours and a half in Grosvenor Square ; 
after luncheon worked again an hour indifferently ; was lazy and brought 
the work home pretending to myself I could not do more to it till it was 
dry which was merely a busy shape of idleness. Drew at home for an 
hour. Went to Madame Coulon's [the music mistress] and walked down 
Regent's Street, for what motive I cannot tell except wasting time. I 
hate Saturday ! another week gone and I have done nothing, have worked 
even less than usual.' 

Her description of Sunday, a day of enforced boredom, is 
not more happy : — 

' Got up late ; dawdled over dressing, went to Church ; in the afternoon 
walked. Dawdled, dawdled, dawdled through a great deal of precious 
time.' 

On her seventeenth birthday she wrote : — 

' At work a little after 7 ; after breakfast worked again till 12 when 
we started on an expedition. It rained hard and was very dismal. Got 
back late ... 17 to-day, that is to say 17 years wasted ; three parts at 
least wasted in eating, dawdling and flittering [frittering] time away. I 
dread getting older, at the beginning of each year I saj^ " I will do some- 
thing " and at the end I have done nothing. Art is eternal, but life is 
short, and each minute idly spent will rise, swelled to whole months and 
years, and hound me in my grave. This year every imaginable obstacle 
has been put in my wa)^ but slowly and tediously I am mastering them all. 
Now I must do sometliing — I will work till I do something. 

' Lost during the year 4 months through illness, 5 through being 
prevented in every possible way, i in flittering time away, add aboot 2 
only in genuine work and that frequently diminished by inapplication ! — 
I will make up for it now, I have not a moment to lose.' 

At length leave was reluctantly given for her to attend the 
Slade Schools, where women had only recently been admitted, 
and she prepared to throw herself heart and soul into this new 
adventure. One thing she determined — if the future held any 
success for her this should be achieved on the merits of her work 
alone. She would start at the lowest rung of the ladder, she 

M 



178 EVELYN DE MORGAN 

would dress shabbily, and slave like any poor student whose 
bread depended on her labour, and the petty conventions which 
had hitherto hedged her about and hampered her should b€ 
for ever ignored. 

The first check which her ardour received was the discovery 
that she was not to be allowed to walk alone either to or from 
Gower Street. It was unheard of, she was told, that a girl oi 
her age and class should go about utterly unprotected. To an 
embryo Art-student this savoured too much of the young- 
ladyism from which she was determined to escape ; but she 
still had to learn that convention was a myth which died hard. 
' It is not done ' was, in her day, a verdict from which there 
was no appeal. 

Trivial as was the point at issue, perhaps nothing serves 
to mark more completely the gulf which exists between past and 
present than the liberty which the girl of to-day enjoys when 
compared with that permitted to her predecessor in a former 
generation. It is only necessary to glance at the pages of Punch 
■ — that invaluable record of passing phases and foUies — to re- 
create the social atmosphere of that time. For those were days 
when the single went nowhere unchaperoned by the married ; 
when only a fast girl went alone in a hansom, or, worse stiU, 
drove in a hansom with the doors unclosed ; and when the jest 
never palled of the incredible woman who wished to have a 
latch-key. 

It must be borne in mind, moreover, that, only twenty years 
earlier, elderly spinsters without any adult male protector saw 
no absurdity in the fact that they had to keep some small page- 
boy to attend their walks abroad through quiet, respectable 
regions. No matter how minute and youthful this male escort 
might be, his guardianship was necessary to placate the pro- 
prieties. Nor could matrons be too venturesome. Mrs. Picker- 
ing used to relate how, as a woman of forty, tempted by the beliel 
that she should meet her husband immediately, she had once 
rashly walked a few yards down Upper Grosvenor Street with- 
out a footman, and, in consequence — even in that irreproach- 
able locality — had been promptly accosted by a gay rake who 
had perforce misunderstood her improtected condition. Thus, 
in the seventies, it still scarcely provoked a smile, that a friend 
of hers, who was a septuagenarian and a great-aunt, never, for 
fear of being deemed unlady-like, ventured anywhere unattended 
by her old coachman — indeed the latter in sHppery weather 
during the winter might be seen solemnly preceding his mistress 
to church, strewing sand upon the pavement upon which she 
was about to tread. ' It is not done ' still defined the correcti- 
tudes ; and if you were indiscreet enough to defy what was 
' not done,' you must be prepared to pay the penalty ! 



THE THORNY WAY 179 

So Evelyn, to her indignation, was sent off to her classes in 
a carriage and pair. But she soon stopped the carriage and 
walked the rest of the way on foot. Next, a maid was engaged 
to accompany her — a woman of matronly proportions whose 
whole appearance exhaled respectability, and who received orders 
never to lose sight of her charge. The latter surveyed the portly 
frame of her proposed escort with secret satisfaction — a woman 
with that figure could be easily out-distanced ! 

Forthwith it was a usual sight to see Evelyn, her long hair 
flying in the wind, racing excitedly to her work, while far aw^ay, 
on the other side of the road, the stout maid Burgess toiled 
breathlessly in a vain endeavour to keep her in view. Two 
orders Evelyn promptly gave her so-called attendant — one was 
that the maid was never to be seen on the same side of the street 
as herself ; the other was that, when calling to fetch her after 
the classes were over, the woman was to wait at some entrance 
indicated. Needless to say, the unfortunate Burgess often 
stayed wearily at the trysting-place only to discover that her 
charge had long since left the building by another dooi'way, and 
had thus successfully eluded the humiliation of being seen 
accompanied by a maid. 

The story still lingers in the memory of Evelyn's fellow- 
students how, in her hurry to get to her work, she made her 
first appearance at the classes without a hat, blissfully uncon- 
scious that she had lost it en route. Daily she was in a fever to 
arrive the instant the doors were opened, and to make the very 
utmost of the opportunity which had been grudgingly granted 
to her. ' I can always picture her,' relates one of her fellow 
students, ' a slender, picturesque girl, with finely chiselled fea- 
tures and very lovely hair, dressed in some bright material and 
absorbed in her work. From the first she produced beautiful 
colours on her canvas, but if she attempted to match a ribbon 
for a dress, it was curious that she always bought the wrong 
shade and seemed unable to see this. She was full of mischief, 
told a story dehghtfully, and her laughter was irresistible ; but 
where her painting was concerned she was all eagerness, serious- 
ness and absorption.' Another friend of many years writes : 

' Dear Evelyn ! I wish I could say something that would evoke 
her charming image ! She was such a gifted being with such a spiritual 
imagination. Yet all her great gifts and all her learning, all her profound 
thoughts and all her hard work, left her plenty of time for high spirits and 
fun ! I think that of all the girls we knew she was the merriest : I can 
see and hear her laugh now as I think of her. She was a deUghtful being ! 
so quick of sympathy, so warm-hearted, so kind ! ' 

Among her contemporaries at this date under the tuition of 
the future President of the Royal Academy, Sir Edward Poynter, 
were many whose names afterwards became prominent in 



i8o EVELYN DE MORGAN 

literature and art. John Collier and his future wife Mary 
Huxley were her fellow students ; Philip Norman ; Mary Kingsley 
(Lucas Malet) ; ' Dolly ' Tennant, afterwards Lady Stanley ; 
and, by a strange coincidence, her friend Mary Stuart Wortley, 
who afterwards became the wife of Ralph, 2nd Earl of Lovelace, 
De Morgan's friend from the days of babyhood. Meanwhile 
imagination is also arrested by the thought that in this, Evelyn's 
first venture towards freedom, all unconscious of what the years 
held in store, she daily passed the house where her future hus- 
band had come into being ; further, that she was working at a 
branch of the University where he, too, had dreamed his first 
dreams of struggle and achievement, and to the formation and 
promotion of which his father had devoted a lifetime. 

To her disappointment, however, she soon discovered that 
little was to be learnt at the Slade Schools which she had not 
studied already. Her talent met with prompt recognition. ' She 
was considered the most brilliant pupil of her day,' states a 
contemporary. In 1873-4 she gained the first prize for painting 
from the Antique ; and the next year, 1874-5, she gained the 
first prize for painting from the Life ; that same year she like- 
wise won the Slade Scholarship. 

A story runs that, as she was leaving the building after the 
decision respecting this latter had been made knowTi, a gi'oup 
of men-students were examining the list of competitors which 
had been posted near the entrance. All the names upon it were 
those of men with the exception of her own, ambiguous as to 

sex, which headed the list. ' Do you know this d d fellow — 

this Evelyn Pickering ? Who is he ? ' she heard them saving 
angrily as she passed unnoticed through their midst — devoured 
by her anxiety to dodge the maid who was lying in wait for 
her. 

But Evelyn soon realized that it would be a waste of time 
to continue attending classes where she could make little further 
progress ; and she longed to work on independent lines. So 
she threw up the Scholarship ; and about this date one last 
effort was made by her parents to direct her in the way she 
should go. 

Her mother, who was then ill and having a course of baths 
in Germany, wrote that, as she was unable to officiate herself, 
she had aiTanged for her daughter to be presented by a relation 
the following spring. ' I'U go to the Drawing Room if j^oulike,' 
Evelyn wrote in reply ; ' but if I go, I'll kick the Queen ! ' Per- 
haps it should be mentioned that this represented no personal 
animosity on her part to Queen Victoria, it was merely a protest 
against foUy in the abstract. Nevertheless, it was felt that she 
might be capable of carrying out her threat, and the project was 
allowed to drop, though in the eyes of her family not to be pre- 



THE THORNY WAY i8i 

sented was almost equivalent to what the omission of baptism 
would appear in the eyes of a good churchman. It was, how- 
ever, further suggested to Evelyn that she might like to ga 
into Society and see a little of the world, but she jumped to a 
conclusion respecting this process which was certainly unjusti- 
fiable in her case. ' No one shall drag me out with a haltei 
round my neck to sell me ! ' was her imcompromising rejoinder. 

Meanwhile she continued her work despite all obstacles. 
She had no studio, nor even a room with a light suitable for paint- 
ing. The difficulty of introducing models into the house under 
such conditions was great ; and she had little pocket money with 
which to pay them. As a result, pretty Jane, or any members 
of the household who could be bullied or cajoled into sitting for 
her were made use of, and as soon as the present wTiter had 
reached an age at which this was practicable, she, too, was 
pressed into the service. In this connexion, a personal remini- 
scence may not be too much in the nature of a digression. 

Being but a small child, it was with difficulty that I could 
be persuaded to sit still in some uncomfortable att^^ude for what 
seemed to me a space of interminable torment. But only one 
bribe had influence with me. If my sister would teU me a, ftory, 
I could forget for a time the pain of remaining motionless till 
this degenerated into physical torture. As already indicated, 
Evelyn was gifted with an imagination both vivid and gruesome. 
' She delighted in making our flesh creep ! ' complained a com- 
panion of those early days ; and the eerie tales which poured 
from her lips made such an impression on my childish fancy 
that often, after hearing one of them, for many nights I would 
wake screaming with terror, though resolute in my determina- 
tion not to reveal the origin of the nightmare which obsessed 
me, lest in so doing I should deprive myself of any future repe- 
tition of the horrible pleasure which her stories gave me. 

Of these tales I can still recall two. The first was as follows : — 

A traveller journeying on foot through a strange country lost 
his way, and, overtaken by darkness, wandered on and on along 
an interminable road, till he was ready to succumb with ex- 
haustion. The land through which he passed was indescribably 
solitary, no living creature came in sight, no human habitation 
appeared at which he could ask for shelter or for food ; and the 
dim moonhght which, by and by, filtered from a stormy sky, 
revealed only the pale outline of the bare roadway stretching 
monotonously before him, bordered by dark forests and giant 
crags. The stillness oppressed him, and despair weighted his 
tired hmbs till, verging on a state of collapse, he suddenly, to 
his dehght, heard the sound of some vehicle approaching along 
the road behind him. Turning, by the aid of the moonlight he 
perceived a coach looming into sight, on the box of which, 



i82 EVELYN DE MORGAN 

silhouetted darkly against the pale horizon, were the forms of 
a driver and a footman. 

The cumbersome vehicle lumbered heavily along till it reached 
the spot where he stood, when, in response to his gesticulations, 
it drew up ; the footman got down stiffly from the box, and in 
silence held the door open for him to enter. Thankfully, the 
exhausted traveller clambered in, and as he groped his way to 
a seat, the door closed behind him noiselessly, and the coach 
rumbled on. 

He now discovered that ht was in the presence of several 
other passengers who sat rigidly upright in their respective seats 
and eyed him curiously, with piercing gaze. Loquacious in his 
gratitude, he addressed himself to the one opposite to him, and 
uttered effusive thanks for the courtesy which was being shown 
to him ; but the man, who appeared to be clad in some heavy, 
old-fashioned overcoat, spoke never a word in reply, merely 
rolled his eyes, the balls of which glittered strangely in the 
moonlight. Surprised at such taciturnity, the traveller then 
addressed him.self to the next passenger, but with the same 
result— the rigid figure made no response, only rolled its eyes in 
like manner, gazing at him fixedly. With a growing sense of 
discomfort, he turned and addressed some commonplace to 
another of his unsociable companions ; but again he met with 
the same treatment. As the coach lumbered on, all the passen- 
gers sat motionless, each in his respective seat ; all maintained 
unbroken silence ; all eyed him with a gaze which seemed to 
pierce the gloom with sinister intent. And a growing fear crept 
over him, for the silence was as the silence of the grave ; and 
the coach was like a hearse going to the churchyard ; it smelt 
dank with the odour of Death itself ; and its occupants, with 
their rigid forms and glittering eyes, were like no living men . . . 

And suddenly there flashed across his unhappy remembrance 
a legend which he had heard, how, a hundred years before, a 
coach travelling along this same solitary road had, in the dark- 
ness, driven over a precipice so that all its occupants had per- 
ished ; and how, on the anniversary of the disaster, it was 
whispered that a phantom coach, filled with the dead, re-enacted 
the tragedy which had then befallen. And woe betide the 
foolhardy man who unwittingly entered that fated vehicle, for 
he would share the doom of its once-living occupants. . . . 

Then the traveller rose with a terrified cry and strove to open 
the door, but it would not yield to his efforts. He shouted for 
help but none answered ; and, even as he tried to wrench asunder 
the rusty lock, already he saw before him in the moonlight the 
precipice at a bend of the road towards w^hich the fated coach 
was inevitably approaching. Next the moon went behind a 
cloud, and as darkness fell, struggling more madly, he felt the 



THE THORNY WAY 183 

coach first tilt . . . then up-end so that the dead men fell for- 
ward smothering him. . . . For one moment it hmig suspended 
above the abyss, then, with its freight of mouldering dead and 
sluieking living, it crashed downwards to its doom ! 

Here, it will be seen, were excellent ingredients for a night- 
mare ; but it is impossible to convey in print how the story 
gained in the telling from the dramatic eloquence of the narrator. 
Night after night, an unhappy child, in my dreams I found 
myself seated in that phantom coach with the terribly rigid 
occupants roDing their white eyeballs. Then, with a sense of 
suffocation, I was struggling frantically to open a door that was 
firmly closed ; and next would come the culminating horror of 
that crash down the abyss from which I awoke screaming for 
help, or shivering in speechless fright. 

The other story was even more blood-curdling, yet the details 
are not so vivid in my recollection. 

I recall that it told how, in a lonely house there lived a lonely 
child, whose life was a sad one. The only people she ever saw 
besides the few tradespeople who brought food to the house, 
were her father — a stem man, whom she feared ; a nurse, who 
was even a greater terror to her ; and her mother, who, she was 
told, was an incurable invalid ; moreover, for hours together, 
and always at night, she was locked into her nursery. But once 
every evening the stern nurse cam^e to fetch her, and she was 
taken to a distant room in the great house to say good night to 
the mother with whom she was never allowed to be alone. ' You 
must not stay long to tire your poor Mamma ! ' the nurse told 
her. ' Just kiss her, and curtsy and say Good night.' The 
mother sat always in a great chair with its back to the light, a 
still figure half shrouded in a mantilla, whose pale face she could 
see but dimly, and whose hand, when she pressed it to her lips, 
felt flabby and chill. At each visit the mother spoke little, save 
to ask the child if she had been good and obedient ; and on 
receiving an answer in the affirmative, she expressed herself 
pleased in a strange, deep voice. 

So the lonely years passed, till one night it befell that there 
was a fearful thunderstorm. The child in her nursery by her- 
self crouched beneath the bed-clothes trembling with fright as 
the hail rattled against the window-panes and the lightning 
glittered through the room. At length came a louder clap than 
before, accompanied by a yet brighter flash, and springing from 
her bed in terror, she involuntarily fled to the door crying for 
help. 

And lo ! to her astonishment she found that, possibly ren- 
dered forgetful by the storm, the nurse had not turned the key 
in the lock as usual ; it yielded to her efforts, and, frantic with 



i84 EVELYN DE MORGAN 

fear, she sped away down the passage, not knowing what she 
was about to do, but bent only on escaping from that lonely, 
tempest-haunted room. 

Soon she saw a door whence a light gleamed ; and running 
towards it, she next paused abruptly and crouched in the shadow, 
for she heard within her father and the nurse were talking. 
' Do you think that she suspects ? ' she heard her father ask ; 
and the nurse answered in sinister tones — ' She is growing older ! ' 
Then the father thought for a space, and said slowly — ' We must 
do to her as was done to her mother ! ' and the nurse laughed 
in a fashion which made the blood run cold in the veins of the 
listening child. Fearing she scarcely knew what, yet more 
terrified than she had ever been at the storm, she fled away 
along the dark corridor, the desperate determination growing in 
her heart to seek the protection of that mother of whom she 
knew so little, and to learn from the invaUd's own lips what was 
this mystery which seemed to enfold them both. 

Swiftly she traversed the long passages and silent rooms, the 
lightning playing upon the walls, till at length she reached the 
well-known door to which she had so often been brought. She 
knocked timidly, but received no answer ; so, hesitatingly, she 
entered. Again the lightning flashed, and she saw that her 
invahd mother was not — as might have been expected — in bed. 
She sat, a still figure, in the same chair in which the child had 
always seen her, the dark mantilla, as usual, half shrouding her 
pallid face and motionless form. 

Nervously the child called to her, but received no answer ; 
and with a nameless suspicion waxing in her mind, the unbidden 
visitor groped her way across the room. For a space all was 
still ; next came a louder crash of thunder, and the girl, terror- 
stricken, involuntarily reached out her hand for protection and 
clutched the arm of the apathetic figure by whose side she now 
stood. Then . . . slowly . . . she felt the figure heave for- 
ward. It toppled over — sliding with a dull thud on to the floor ; 
and, as the lightning came again, she gazed in horror upon the 
huddled form at her feet, from the limp head of which the man- 
tilla had fallen back, revealing an ashen, lifeless face. Her 
mother was dead — and stuffed ! 

The mystery was solved. Her father and the nurse had 
murdered the mother, and, for fear of the tradespeople who 
visited the house, had had her stuffed, and kept up the fiction 
that she still lived, an incurable invalid. The nurse was a ven- 
triloquist, hence the imaginary conversations which had appar- 
ently proceeded from the dead woman ! ! 

As to what followed, I have no recollection ; always my 
memory stays at that grim moment when the stuffed mother 
fell limply to the floor, and the petrified child stood alone in the 






: THE THORNY WAY 185 

silent room listening in terror lest she should hear the approaching 
footsteps of her would-be murderers ! 

Thus, with her attention centred on her painting, Evelyn 
could give rein to a power of invention wholly detached from 
the subject at which she was working. While she told these 
stories, filling me with a horror which has survived for a life- 
time, lovely things were flowing from her brush, and her brain 
was grappling with problems of technique or busy with the 
portrayal of ideals. Her work soon attracted public attention 
from its richness of colouring, its fine brushwork, and the power 
which, in spite of immaturity, it displayed. The critics united 
in praise of it ; and no sooner were her pictures seen than they 
were sold. This latter fact opened out a vista of new possibili- 
ties to her, for money meant freedom, and freedom meant greater 
power to work. She slaved with tireless energy till, with in- 
creasing success, she determined to go out to study in Rome. 

The suggestion naturally met with opposition. In days when 
to walk to Gower Street unprotected was viewed askance, for 
a handsome girl, not yet twenty, to travel out to Italy alone 
and friendless was not likely to meet with encouragement. 
Wherefore more lay in her decision than at first appears. For it 
represented a yet more crucial severance from the old traditions ; 
and she was aware what her choice entailed. On the one hand 
there still lay open to her the usual life of a girl of her age — a 
life of ease and amusement, to be enjo^^ed with the warm approval 
of her elders. On the other she could only see a vista of hard- 
ship, of actual poverty— since under the circumstances no funds 
would be provided for her maintenance — and the sense that she 
was looked upon by her relations much in the light of a pariah. 
To strong natures, opposition is bracing ; the mere fact of 
having to do battle strengthens endeavour ; yet to Evelyn, 
though it did not shake her determination, there is no doubt 
that the lack of sympathy hurt like a wound. 

Nevertheless, to Rome she went with no funds save the pre- 
carious means she could earn, and a dress allowance kept pur- 
posely scanty. Alone in lodgings she studied, or paced the 
ancient city lost in dreams of an impersonal Past and a personal 
Future. She dwelt, absorbed, on the glories of the Renaissance ; 
she drank in the poetrj^ the pageantry, the haunting antiquity 
of her surroundings. The beauty of Italy satisfied her soul- 
hunger ; the love of it was to leave her only with life itself. 

To this period of her career must be assigned various pictures 
of which it is not possible here to give any detailed description, 
but in which the classical severity of her earlier manner first 
blended with the mellow beauty of Italian Art. About this date 
she also modelled a fine head of ]\k;dusa which she had cast in 



THE THORNY WAY 187 

snug in bed. So soon as the nets cooled, they were to be replaced 
by others — " Seven, or else nine times," he pronounced impres- 
sively ; " Odd numbers, remember. One must never have 
recourse to even numbers or it has no effect ! " How Evelyn 
laughed ! but she was well the next day and able to enjoy to 
the full the beauty of Assisi. After that trip we were always 
friends. ' 

Soon after Evelyn's return from her first visit to Italy her 
family moved from the house in Upper Grosvenor Street in 
which they had lived for so many years, to a large corner house 
in Bryanston Square, No. 48. About eighteen months later her 
father died suddenly from a heart attack ; and subsequently her 
mother during a great part of each year lived in Yorkshire near 
her old home. For a time Evel3m used the large ball-room in 
the deserted London house for her painting ; but ere long she 
left home finally, to live in rooms adjacent to a studio and devote 
herself more completely to her work. 

At this juncture, in May, 1877, what was regarded as an 
epoch-making event in certain artistic circles occurred in the 
opening of the Grosvenor Gallery. In order to understand the 
need which this annual Exhibition was designed to supply, it 
is necessary to revert to the conditions then prevailing in the 
world of Art. 

Thirty years previously, in 1848, the association of three lads 
— Holman Hunt, aged twenty-one, Rossetti twenty, and Millais 
nineteen — had resulted in an unprecedented and far-reaching 
movement. These young artists, strongly influenced by the 
originahty and thought of Ford Madox-Brown, broke away from 
the stereotyped ideas which had previously prevailed, and in- 
augurated a crusade to infuse new life and light into the hide- 
bound conventions of their day. 

Imbued with the grace and charm of the early Italian and 
Flemish masters, they recognized the profound and loving care 
with which even the primitive among those painters had bestowed 
upon their Art, and how, while striving after a high ideal, they 
adhered to a loyal presentment of fact. The beauty and the 
sincerity, the fantasy and yet the faithfulness of those long-dead 
workers sank deep into the hearts of the young crusaders, and 
fired them with the spirit of emulation. Space will not here 
permit any adequate analysis of their dreams, nor of the motives 
which conduced to the nomenclature which they adopted when 
electing to call themselves the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. It 
suffices that the root and aim of their endeavour was a great 
sincerity, and to do the very utmost which was in them. To 
sum up their creed in their own boyish language, they determined 
to paint the best possible pictures in the best possible way ; and 
although, obviously, opinions might differ as to the meaning of 



i88 EVELYN DE MORGAN 

the word ' best,' their purpose was far removed from that of the 
decadents, whose aim has since been to paint the worst possible 
pictures in the worst possible way, and thus to achieve a cheap 
notoriety by starthng humanit}'. 

As to the need for some drastic upheaval in accepted conven- 
tions at this particular epoch, the student alike of Art and History 
may recognize its urgency. It is true that the long-dead are apt 
to become deified in the thoughts of a remote posterity ; equally 
true is it that the tendency of every age is to despise the genera- 
tion which directly preceded it and to view a divergence from 
the conclusions of its immediate forefathers as a sign of progress 
and development. None the less, at the date when the young 
Pre-Raphaelites disturbed the self-complacency of their con- 
temporaries. Art had undoubtedly sunk to a level of banality 
which needed some powerful incentive to instil into it fresh life. 
The belief prevailed that it could only be learnt by rote and that 
accepted methods should not be departed from, while indepen- 
dence of thought was throughout hampered by an artificiality 
which was death to inspiration. 

Like all the exponents of a novel creed the crusaders were 
first hailed as prophets, then pilloried by a fickle public. 
Directly it was recognized that these men, impudent by reason 
of their very youth, were bent on breaking away from accepted 
standards, that they dared to think and act in defiance of estab- 
lished rules, public and press alike united to decry them. Only 
the championship of Ruskin later stemmed the torrent of 
contumely. 

As the years passed, however, the somewhat awkward term 
which they had coined to express a mere youthful camaraderie 
and unanimity of aim, gradually acquired a second meaning 
apart from that originally intended by them. ' The public,' 
relates Percy Bate, ' who came to associate the term with the 
later work of Rossetti applied it to his pictures and to those of 
Burne- Jones, ignoring the earlier meaning of the word, and 
using it to denote the eclectic and poetic school of which these 
painters were the founders, and of which their work is the highest 
achievement. With this double sense this word exists, and uith 
this twofold meaning it may be accepted, inasmuch as the later 
tradition was derived from the more mature development in the 
style of these two artists who were originally Pre-Raphaelites 
in the strictest sense.' 

In accordance with this interpretation, therefore, Evelyn was 
classified as one of a sect who sought ' to express the qualities of 
truth and directness, of honesty and definite inspiration which 
they discerned in the work of the early Italian Masters ' — a 
School the aim of which can be summed up adequately in that 
word ' sincerity.' With all the poetry and the imagery of a high 



THE THORNY WAY 189 

endeavour its exponents believed in a faithful adherence to accur- 
acy of fact and detail, in an infinite capacity for taking pains. 
As there is said to be no royal road to learning, so, to them, 
there were no claptrap methods of achieving a cheap notoriety. 
Each gave of the utmost which was in him — the aspiration of 
his spirit, the labour of his hands — to the ideal to which he was 
dedicated. There is an allegory that aptly illustrates the atti- 
tude of those ardent young spirits who inaugurated this new 
movement and their disciples. A young painter continued year 
after year creating pictures with a wonderful red glow which 
none could rival, and the world marvelled at his secret. But 
still his pictures grew more beautiful, his colours glowed with 
more radiant hues, while he himself waxed more white and frail. 
At length one day, before a masterpiece, he lay white and silent 
for ever, for the blight of Death had stUled the active hand and 
the exquisite brain. And the world continued marvelling — 
* Where did he find his colour from } ' — but none recognized that 
he had painted with his life-blood. 

* 4c * * * 

And all this discussion about the new School of Art — new and 
yet so old — had been seething in the world for thirty years while 
the Academy had shown little encouragement to a movement, 
some of the leaders of which, and their followers, determined to 
ignore the Academy. Thus it was that certain prominent 
painters of the age remained voluntarily and resolutely outside 
the walls of an Institution which they held was not representa- 
tive of the Zeitgeist, and the decisions of which, they affirmed, 
did not show that fine impartiality to which it should have been 
pledged. It was under these conditions that Sir Coutts Lindsey 
determined to start a Gallery on more liberal lines, one which 
should not be hampered by worn-out traditions, but should give 
scope to original merit of conception and execution, and to the 
untrammelled expression of individual aims. Moreover, to this 
Gallery artists were to send by invitation only, which at once 
avoided certain obvious evils attendant upon selection by a 
Committee, and put each exhibitor on his mettle to give of his 
very best. 

This new experiment in the World of Art was awaited with 
great interest. But while all viewed it with roused curiosity, 
some looked forward to it with enthusiastic expectations and 
some were prepared to mock at the vagaries of the new Sect for 
whose exploitation it was presumably designed, and who, since 
all great movements have their attendant freaks, were satirized 
in the person of — 

' A Greenery-yallery, Grosvenor-Gallery 
Foot-in-the-grave young man.' 



IQO EVELYN DE MORGAN 

Evelyn, then aged twenty-one, was invited to contribute to 
the first Exhibition, and to it she sent a picture of Ariadne in 
Naxos, a work which, despite its immaturity, is remarkable in 
its power of suggestion and supreme grace. Ariadne is depicted 
as having sunk upon the seashore with bowed head and droop- 
ing figure, while one hand resting upon the sand supports her, 
the other lies listlessly in her lap. Her back is turned to the 
ocean, which her gaze must first have swept with despairing 
anguish for any trace of her beloved ; and against the waste of 
lonely water and solitary shore, her pitiful figure is defined in its 
slender loveliness. Her robe of rich russet red and the subdued 
green of the cloak which has fallen from her shoulders contrast 
with the soft fairness of her skin ; while the shining glory of her 
hair, falling from a narrow fillet, shrouds her like a cloud, and 
forms a golden backgi-ound to the pale beauty of her face. The 
conception is arresting, not only in its depth of colouring and 
delicacy of workmanship, but in its extreme simplicity. liere 
is no straining after effect, no attempt at a tour deforce which the 
painter was too young to achieve ; but all the tenderness of a 
great love, all the desolation of a broken heart are expressed in 
the pathetic grace of that bowed figure, crushed beneath its 
intensity of grief. 

This picture was purchased at the Private View by the Right 
Hon. John Mundella ; and many years later Mr. Shaw-Sparrow 
wTote of it as follows : — 

' The maiden name of Mrs. William De Morgan was Evelyn Pickering, 
and twenty-three years have passed since that name appeared for the first 
time in the catalogue of an important exhibition of pictures. A painting 
in oil was hung then at the Grosvenor Gallery ; it had for its subject 
Ariadne in Naxos ; it was close in drawing, thoughtful and precise in 
composition ; and its style, its general character, was Pre-Raphaelite, 
but not as yet in what may be called a Victorian manner. Its painter, 
that is to say, was not, in 1877, a devoted follower of the Pre-Raphaelite 
Brotherhood. Miss Pickering indeed had in those days barelj'^ scraped 
acquaintance with the most noted men of genius who had been influenced 
by the modern Pre-Raphaelite movement. She had not seen the pictures 
that Millais painted in his first period, nor had she a chance of becoming 
familiar with them till they were brought once more to public notice by 
the Millais Exhibition of 18S6. With Rossetti's poetry, in 1877, Miss 
Pickering was well acquainted, but of liis genius in painting she knew 
scarcely au^'ihing at all, and it remained almost unknown to her till she 
visited that fine show of Rossetti's pictures which was held after his 
death. As regards Burne-Jones she had certainly seen a few of his 
paintings, and had certainly been moved by their peculiar greatness ; but 
the influence of Burne-Jones had not then appeared in her work. . . . 
The short of the matter is that Miss Pickering's style had come to her at 
first-hand, a natural expression of her spiritual nature. She understood 
the great predecessors of Raphael ; she and they were congenial, " across 
the great gulf of time they exchanged smiles and a salute." Even as a 
child she made friends with those who were represented in the National 
Gallery ; it was from their pictures that her inborn love of Art received 



THE THORNY WAY 191 

its earliest encouragement. Other aesthetic influences came soon after- 
wards, the first of these being the wise sympathy and the rich, suggestive 
art of her uncle, Mr. Roddam Spencer-Stanhope.' 

The phrase here employed, ' a natural expression of her 
spiritual nature,' is singularly apt when applied to the work 
criticized. It is in the character of a truism to emphasize that 
there are three standpoints from which a picture may be re- 
garded : one, in relation to its individual interpretation of 
Nature ; one, in its grasp of technique ; one, in its reflection 
of the mentality of the painter— its exposition of some truth or 
purpose which the artist was striving to express. But while any 
just estimate of achievement must obviously appraise each of 
these points, it is from the last that — to many — the pictures of 
Evelyn make their strong appeal. For they are the work of a 
scholar, a thinker, an idealist ; and it is the mind revealed in the 
picture which calls to minds atune. 

As to the especial influence upon her work represented by her 
close association with her uncle, Roddam Spencer- Stanhope, it is 
diflicult to take the exact measure. In their aim and their vision, 
as, too, in their passionate love of beautiful colouring, there was 
a complete harmony between the older and the younger artist ; 
still more did Evelyn owe an inestimable debt to the sympathy 
and encouragement of her uncle. Yet their work, to the last, 
remained distinct and individual ; while later, when Evelyn had 
achieved a mastery of technique in which Spencer- Stanhope 
failed, with unhesitating generosity he acknowledged the fact : 
' You can draw infinitely better than I do,' he said, ' I can only 
envy you ! ' So, too, in regard to the other influence of which 
the reviewer speaks — her friendship with Burne- Jones — only a 
superficial inspection can link such dissimilar work ; for the art 
of Burne- Jones, with its calm, passionless beauty, is more Byzan- 
tine in character, while that of Evelyn never wavered from her 
early allegiance to the glowing and more animated Italian School 
of the Renaissance. Moreover, this was subsequently accentu- 
ated by her closer connexion with Tuscany which she had early 
loved. From 1880 Spencer-Stanhope made his permanent home 
on the Apennine Hills, having discovered that there only could 
he procure some immunity from the asthma which all his life had 
hunted him from place to place. Thus a second home at Villa 
Nuti, Bellosquardo, and an annual visit to Florence, resulted for 
Evelyn ; and in that old grey palace of the Strozzi Princes she 
subsequently visuahzed some of her fairest inspirations, looking 
out through a vista of roses and ohves, afar to a panorama of 
blue mountains, and down to the lovely Val d'Arno where, 
drowsing in the sunlight, lay Florence, the city of beUs. 

To the Grosvenor Gallery during the years which followed she 



192 EVELYN DE MORGAN 

sent annually — there are over twenty-five exhibits recorded to 
her name on the hsts ; and at its cessation, she transferred her 
work to the New Gallery. It was perhaps inevitable that the 
former Institution should become viewed somewhat in the light 
of a rival to the Academy, and that those who had once enlisted 
in the ranks of its contributors should feel it a point of honour 
to remain loyal adherents to the object with which it had been 
inaugurated. To the Academy neither Evelyn nor Spencer- 
Stanhope, of set purpose, ever offered a single exhibit ; while 
Burne- Jones, the tardy recognition of whose genius by the body 
of Academicians resulted in their request that he would accept 
the honour of Membership, experienced genuine qualms of 
conscience in acceding to their offer. 

Meanwhile Evelyn sent to Exhibitions at Liverpool, Man- 
chester, Birmingham, Berlin, and others. Some of her pictures 
were sold by the Fine Art Society, some were painted on com- 
mission, some were purchased by pubhc Galleries, many went to 
America. In the Russell-Cotes Gallery in Bournemouth is a 
picture Aurora Triumphans which she painted at the age of 
twenty-two, and on which her initials E. P. were, by a forgery, 
changed to E. B. J., so that for twenty years it was believed to 
be the work of Edward Burne- Jones. The Walker Art Gallery 
at Liverpool purchased another large canvas entitled Life and 
Thought emerging from the Tomb. Mr. Imrie, an Art Collector 
of the same city, ordered successively from her eight pictures, 
and distracted her much by announcing his desire for ' a single 
figure — preferably in white ! ' — instructions which the young 
artist did not attempt to carry out.^ 

' She made her name,' relates Miss Morris, ' as an artist of 
distinction. Her pictures have an epic quality and are spacious 
in conception, while [in her later work] showing an almost ex- 
aggerated insistence on decorative detail. They are remarkable 
for the beauty of drapery design, for drawing vigorous and 
delicate and for sumptuous colour, for great enjoyment of tex- 
tures. She had astonishing physical endurance and power of 
work, starting to paint early in the morning and going on swiftly 
and surely throughout the day. The output in consequence 
was very great.' 

Among her early pictures she painted one, now in Africa, 
which she called The Thorny Way. It depicts a Princess stand- 
ing on the steps of a Palace, clad in a lovely robe of gold, richly 

These pictures were Flora, Vie Goddess of Blossoms and Flowers, 
exhibited at Glasgow and at Wolverhampton ; Gloria in Excelsis (in which 
the Angel's wings were painted from the wings of humming-birds) ; The 
City of Light ; The Crown of Glory ; A Dryad ; Helen of Troy and Cassandra 
(both now in the possession of the author) ; and others untraced, including 
later purchases by Mr. Imrie. 




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THE THORNY WAY 193 

adorned with jewels. Behind her, through an archway, one 
sees a vista of the lovely flower-bedecked country she is leaving ; 
before her lies the path at which she is gazing, beset with cruel, 
giant briars on which she is about to tread with bare feet — 

' Briars like bitter words and thorns like malice. 
Great twining creepers like an iron thong ' 

Mrs, Fleming, nee Kipling, seeing this picture, wrote 
some hasty verses on it as she had done on the picture by De 
Morgan, one version of which ran as follows : — 

The Thorny Way. 

She left the palace of the King, her father ; 

She left the music, and she left the throng ; 

She left the thornless flowers, hers to gather 

At her own will — without a thought of wrong ; 

At the great bidding of another Father, 

The King of Kings — whose mandate is so strong — 

She turned from pleasure — unto suffering rather — 

And set her feet the thorny path along. 

The path had thorns to pierce and briars to sting her ; 

Snakes that were hidden — savage beasts a-stir — 

And yet she knew it was the way to bring her 

Into the Path of Peace prepared for her, 

Where after wounds and anguish bravely borne, 

There shone a Glory from a Crown of Thorn. 

Did she, one wonders, trace a connexion between the pur- 
suit of an Ideal by the girl in the picture and that of the girl 
who had painted the picture ? Be that as it may, of the work 
which the young artist accomplished. Sir William Richmond 
pronounced, later in life, ' Her industry was astonishing, and the 
amount which she achieved was surprising, especially considering 
the infinite care with which she studied each detail in her deter- 
mination to bring it to the highest point of perfection, I do 
not think she ever painted a picture on which she did not invite 
my criticism, and I always found her work remarkable.' George 
Frederick Watts gave a more emphatic verdict. ' She is a long 
way ahead of all the women,' he stated on one occasion, ' and 
considerably ahead of most of the men, I look upon her as the 
first woman-artist of the day — if not of all time,' 

So the years passed — years of loneliness and work, of hard- 
ship and poverty — but years, too, of happy aspiration and 
achievement ; till, by and by, in the ever-widening circle of the 
friends whom they shared in common, she and De Morgan drifted 
together, and found in each other the afhnij^ for which each 
had been waiting. 

The story runs that it was at a fancy-dress ball given by 



194 EVELYN DE MORGAN 

Mrs. Walter Bagchot that they first met, and laughed together 
about art, life and the eccentricities of humanity. Evelyn, in 
rose-colour, wrote herself down as ' A tube of rose-madder ' ; 
De Morgan, asked to name his costume, described it as ' madder 
still.' The new acquaintance was clinched in typical fashion. 
Perturbed at the perversity of a glove which refused to be 
buttoned, he at length turned despairingly to his partner : ' If 
you will button my glove for me,' he pleaded, ' I will give you 
one of my pots.' The bargain was struck, the glove was but- 
toned, the pot accepted, and the comradeship cemented for all 
time. 

The manner in which news of the engagement was com- 
municated to Evelyn's family was equally characteristic. It 
must first be explained that she had made a practice of dining 
with her mother in Bryanston Square every Sunday, often 
bringing with her some friend. Only a short time previously she 
had alarmed her family by the announcement that the following 
week she intended to bring to dinner a severe elderly female of 
the most forbidding and cantankerous type, and when the day 
came, in walked the antithesis of what had been expected — 
a lovely girl of sixteen who made merry at the dismay which her 
advent had occasioned— Margaret Burne- Jones. When, there- 
fore, a letter from Evelyn arrived abruptly announcing that she 
was engaged to be married, and was intending to bring her fianc4 
to dinner on the following Sunday, in view of her known predilec- 
tion for a practical joke, the intelligence was received with the in- 
creduHty it seemed to court. Here, obviously, was another jest 
— this time too far-fetched for credence ! — Evelyn, whose sole 
romance was her art — Evelyn to have fallen in love, to be en- 
gaged—to be about to be married like any ordinary mortal — 
the absurdity of the suggestion was manifest. So an answer 
was dispatched conveying this shrewd interpretation, and elicited 
a somewhat despairing protest from the recipient — ' But I am 
serious ; I will bring the man to dinner on Sunday ! ' Only 
then did a slight misgiving cross her mother's mind. ' You don't 
think there can be any truth in it ? ' she questioned hesitatingly, 
and the supposition was received with derision. ' Evelyn would 
never look at any man,' pronounced one of her brothers com- 
placently — ' unless it was a picturesque Italian organ-grinder ! ' 

But when the dinner hour arrived the following Sunday, with 
it arrived a man who, despite the embarrassment consequent 
upon the novelty of his position, had an attractive manner and 
greeted the family as his own. Inquiries subsequently elicited 
that he was known to Spencer-Stanhope, who afhrmed that he 
had heard ' nothing but good of De Morgan ' ; and all went 
merry as a marriage bell, save that, owing to the infatuation for 
manufacturing pottery displayed by the prospective bridegroom, 



THE THORNY WAY 195 

his income was precarious, and the engagement was Hkely to 
prove a lengthy one. ' We are only engaged,' Evelyn wrote to 
her uncle, ' we should not dream of getting married for at least 
fifteen years ! ' ' All the better,' he rejoined ; ' there will be less 
time to quarrel in ! ' De Morgan, too, when questioned respect- 
ing the date of the wedding, rephed contentedly, ' I don't see 
where the hurry is — why, I waited over eighteen years for Evelyn 
to be born ! ' Most people received the news with incredulity. 
' Evelyn and William De Morgan were such gifted and uncommon 
creatures,' writofS Miss Robinson, ' and though — as it turned out 
— so suited to make one another happy, they were superficially 
so un-aUke. I was very much surprised when she told me of 
their engagement — she was such a bright, harum-scarum thing 
and he then seemed to me such an old bachelor ! ' Some of De 
Morgan's friends, moreover, took him to task facetiously about 
his projected change of state : — 

* It is very inconvenient and inconsiderate of you — really ' [runs one 
of these letters], ' as it puts me in a regular fix. I have always been in the 
habit latterly of sending my friends a De Morgan pot as a wedding present 
— I hardly know what else to choose. I suppose you would not care for 
one, would you ? they really are very beautiful things, and not too common 
yet. If you would, I shall be happy to help you to choose one ! ' 

Meanwhile in the ball-room of the house which De Morgan 
rented in Great Marlborough Street the engaged couple started 
a joint exhibition of their pottery and pictures. There, on 
Sunday afternoons, they met, and jointly entertained their 
friends, dispensing tea in rose-coloured De Morgan cups which, 
lovely in themselves, made the beverage they contained look like 
dirty soup. It was not till three years later that the wedding 
took place. To her mother, who was then in Italy staying with 
the Spencer-Stanhopes, Evelyn wrote, ' I should hate to have a 
fuss ; may we have a run-away wedding ? ' and the answer was 
sympathetic — ' By all means, but the only difficulty I see is 
there is no one to run away from ! ' 

Nevertheless, when the wedding took place, it was not with- 
out an element of adventure. Few friends attended the quiet 
ceremony, on a bleak March day in 1887, when the bride's red 
dress and hat formed a refreshing note of colour in the prevailing 
gloom of a yellow fog. No plans had been made for the honey- 
moon, and the couple characteristically drove to the nearest 
station to see what trains chanced to be in at the moment of 
their arrival. The somewhat tame result of this novel proceeding 
was that they found themselves en route for the Isle of Wight. 
Thence De Morgan wrote to Burne- Jones to announce the fact 
of his marriage, and also that he and his wife had bought a house 
in the Vale, Chelsea, where they expected to take up their abode 
immediately on their return. 



196 EVELYN DE MORGAN 

William De Morgan to Edward Burne-Jones. 

' Black Gang Chine, 

' Isle of Wight, 

' March 6. '87. 
' Dear old Ned, — 

' I must just send you a line to spare you the shock of seeing the 
Noose in the Noosepaper. I have busted and bloomed and blossomed 
into a married man, after having been single, man and boy, for more than 
forty years. I hope it mil turn out well. When I have misgivings, I 
console myself with the rare old adage, Vixere nupti ante Agamemnona. 
If my recollection serves me right though, Agamemnon didn't come off 
so well as I deserve to — as for him, no doubt it was all right, for he was 
no better than the heathen. Now /'ma ratepayer ! 

' Me and Mrs. 
Demorgann^epickering (it wants a whole line) are going to reside in a 
Wale, where indeed Mrs. Mould told Mrs. Gamp we all reside — but this 
is an Imperitini in Impeylo — a subwale — just oppersite Paulton Square, 
where they murdered an 'ousckeeper and shoved her in a box and buried 
her in the back garden — this is considered in the rent. By the way, we 
don't pay any, having bought the lease, and perhaps if they'd done this 
in the case of the Wale of the Temple there wd have been no rent. 

' Anyhow the Wale is there. We don't know our number. The 
postman he says one number, Mr. Wliistler's French bonne opposite she 
says another — the rate-collector he says another. Qtiot homines, tot 
sententiae ! — however, I will speak no more French. Besides a new studio 
calls the passer-by's attention to the Mansion. He cannot pass by 
neither, because he can't, as you'll see when you come. If he depends on 
passing by, he'll have to come on the parish — I'm sorry. 

' Now to the point. Robbed of all linguistic decoration, all flowers 
of language, and figures of speech (my wife is agitating me by remarks) 
it is that I am and always shall be 

' Your affectionate friends, 
' Wm. de Morgan. 
' Evelyn de Morgan. 
' She began it with a P. I.' 

Edward Burne-Jones to William De Morgan. 

Undated. 
' My dear D.M., — 
' We all live in a WALE. 
* Me as well as you does. 
1 have been ill. I have been uncommon ill, and can't go out, I can't ; so 
I can't come to you, not brobly for days to come I can't. . . . 

' Did you expect an answer to 3'our letter, dear fellow ? Have you 
known me these forty years and still expect answers to letters ? 

' I should like to see that house — yes, I should. But I have been ill. 
I have had a bad illness — I was in danger of swearing very often — it was a 
cold — notliing is worse than a cold except 2 colds, I have had 2 colds — I 
am much weakened. I have not been happy. I hate being unwell. I 
hate the least discomfort. I like things to go happily, prosperously and 
smoothly — that's what I mean by Ethics, and I mean the same thing by 
political economy, and my aspirations in sociaUsm are all founded on my 
being well and prosperous and happy. 

' I am your affect, friend, 

' E. BURNE-JONES.' 



WILLIAM 

AND EVELYN 

DE MORGAN 



CHAPTER IX 

THE FULHAM PERIOD 

1887-1908 

THE Vale, where the De Morgans took up their abode, was 
a unique Little bit of old Chelsea, now, alas ! demolished 
to make way for what to a modern builder seems, if not a new 
Heaven, at least a desirable and very new Earth. 

Formerly, as one walked along the noisy and unappetizing 
King's Road, nearly opposite Paulton Square, one came to a 
small crossing guarded by an unpretentious wooden gate, curi- 
ously rural in appearance and suggestive of being the entrance 
to some derelict country field. The chances were against the 
casual passer-by even noticing its existence ; but those who had 
occasion to penetrate to the precincts beyond it found them- 
selves in a roadway resembling a country lane which, in the 
sudden hush that fell, seemed a veritable oasis from the turmoil 
of the noisy thoroughfare they had left. This little retreat was 
a cul de sac down which no vehicles drove and no foot-passengers 
passed save only those who sought one of the three isolated 
houses that nestled there, each in the midst of a spacious garden. 
[t terminated in green sward and waving trees, the remains of 
a.n ancient deer-park ; and the quiet was broken only in true 
rural fashion by the song of birds or the droning of the far-away 
traffic so mellowed by distance that it enhanced the prevailing 
>ense of peace. 

The quaint, rambling dwelling taken by the De Morgans 
>tood on the left of the lane, shrouded in creepers, with a veranda 
Dack and fKont. A greenhouse overlooked the garden, where 
iourished an ancient vine and a figtree, though some of the fine 
)ld mulberry trees, which seemed survivals from a former 
)rchard, had to be cut down to make way for a studio which 
ivelyn built. On one side of the house stretched the former 
ieer-park, and opposite to it was the lovely spot where Whistler 
prew his larkspurs round a velvet lawn and Alfred Austin was 
nspired to pen ' Farewell summers from a garden that I love.' 

Long years afterwards, when writing his last novel, De Mor- 
gan depicted this house in the Vale, disguised under the original 

199 



200 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE ^lORGAN 

name of Kelmscott House, ' The Retreat ' ; and, imagining it as 
It must surely have been at an earUer age of its existence when 
it was a genuine country house amid country sun-oundings, he 
made it the home of the Old Man's Youth, a vision of a happy 
past to tlie hero, Eustace John, then dying in Chelsea In- 
firmary. 

' In those days,' he relates, resuscitating in the story the 
actual conditions of his own boyhood, ' you could walk from 
Putney to Chelsea through fields all the way by keeping off the 
road a little. ... I can recall now what the hay smelt hke ' 
. . . and ' The Retreat ' he imagines thus : ' The lane was hned 
with trees on either side, elm and chestnut, and was entered by 
a swing-gate, down a private carriage way shared by two or three 
residences at the end. The gravel pathway made a circle be- 
tween them, round some older elms, to make a turning for things 
on wheels. At the end on the left, unseen at first, was a garden ' 
. . . and again he dwells reminiscently on the all-pervading 
scent of hay which filled the air in that far-away summer, of the 
intoxicating masses of sweet peas and roses to be seen on the 
smooth lawn before the trim house — even around the old figtree 
he weaves a tender romance — while he shows the vista of a real 
meadow beyond the fence, \\ith a real deer park where — actually ! 
■ — fallow-deer were then browsing on land M'hich formed part of 
some private estate with grand old timber. 

' " I'll show you the house " — [lie represents the fictitious tenant 
saying to Eustace John] ..." my wife is dead now, and I have to go. 
We lived here fifty vears. The house was new when we came. Come 
through into the garden and see the figtree I planted. Fifty years 
ago ! " 

' We followed him straight through the house and a greenhouse into 
the garden. It was a lovely garden, and stretched away to the high 
hedge with a road beyond, and haycarts at a standstill at a roadside 
pothouse. I saw a carter's head and hands and a quart pot above the 
mountain of hay that hid his residuum. He had been too lazy to get 
down for his drink. 

' " It isn't what it was," said the old man. " It was open country 
then. All built up now — all built up ! " He looked towards the backs 
of new houses that were asserting themselves crudely along the King's 
Road. . . .' 

And then that graphic sun-lit vision of a bygone Chelsea 
fades ; and the writer describes with mingled pathos and humour 
how Eustace John returns as an old man to gaze at the trans- 
formed ' Retreat,' then inhabited by De Morgan and his wife. 

' The last time I saw the place . . . our house was no longer there, 
but traces of it appeared in the structure of two smaller houses, on its 
site, one of them inhabited by artists, who had built a studio on our 
garden. Where have they not done so, and who wants the work they do 
in them ? Nemesis had come upon these, for a giant factorj' has sprung 
up and overwhelmed them and their studio. . . .' 











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THE FULHAM PERIOD 201 

But though a network of sordid streets and the blank wall 
of a factory had indeed blotted out all trace of the lovely rural 
scene pictured by De Morgan, at the date when he went to hve 
there, the houses in the Vale, with their peppercorn rental, still 
bravely defied the extinction that had overwhelmed their former 
suiToundings. Full of unexpected nooks and irregularities, 
spruce with gay Morris papers, and decorated with De Morgan 
pots and rich-hued paintings, the home to which the bride and 
bridegroom then returned had no trace of the desolation which 
afterwards overtook it, and seemed a fitting haven of peace for 
two lovers of the Beautiful. 

Above an archway looking out on to the garden Evelyn hung 
a picture that she had recently painted and which she always 
refused to sell, entitled Love's Passing. In tone and conception 
it is reminiscent of an earher work by her that had attracted 
considerable notice. By the Waters of Babylon,^ and the note of 
sadness which permeates the poetry of its inspiration endows it 
with a subtle charm. Two lovers seated in the twilight are 
listening to Love's piping — a radiant Love with rose-hued wings 
and robe which contrast with the paler glory of the sunset sky 
and the rising moon whose beams fall upon the silver river be- 
hind him. And the man, seated upon the beflowered bank, is 
hstening enraptured to the strains of Love's music, but the 
woman, in whose face is a dreamy wistfulness, is holding up a 
hand as though bidding him hearken to another sound which she 
alone hears — the footsteps of Old Age and Death who are ap- 
proaching inevitably on the other side of the River of Life. The 
picture was illustrative of the verses in Tibullus, which were 
translated thus : — 

' List we to Love meanwhile in lovers' fashion ; 

Death nears apace, wdth darkness round his brows ; 
Dull Eld is stealing up to shame our passion ; 

How shall grey hairs beseem these whispered vows ? * 

But, for the present, dull Eld and Death were far away ; 
and these two, the Potter and the Painter, started hfe together 
\\ith as fair a prospect of contentment as ever fell to the lot of 
humanity. Perhaps since the days of the Brownings there has 
been no more perfect instance of a husband and wife who shared 
a harmony of tastes and a happiness independent of external 
conditions, since no joy can equal that of the god-Uke gift of 

^ Of this picture Percy Bate, in his book The English Pre-Raphaelite 
Painters, page 112, remarks: ' In the case of Mrs. De Morgan, the more 
elaborate compositions that she has painted . . . Love's Passing, The 
Gray Sisters, that fine work By the Waters of Babylon and The Dawn, are 
pictures from her easel distinguished by rich and brilliant colouring, great 
decorative charm, and sincere poetic inspiration, qualities that mark this 
artist. . . .' 



202 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

creation. Even the disparity of years between them tended to 
enhance this ; for the vivid excitabiUty of Evelyn's temperament 
was counterbalanced by the placidity of De Morgan's maturer 
outlook ; and another characteristic they had in common has 
before been referred to — a bond of union which the years could 
not break — an irrepressible sense of humour. Those who work 
together and laugh together can in truth never stray far from 
the glamour of Love's piping. 

One of the first letters which greeted them in their new home 
was from Burne- Jones — now convalescent. 

' I have risen from a sick bed — that's a hyperbole, the bed wasn't 
sick, wish it had been, for the disaster could somehow have been remedied. 
The Influenza is the worst of all diseases — not that I deny the merits of 
sciatica for a moment. 

' You remember my legs ? — I humbly ask where they are. The frail 
collapsible sticks that pretend to support me I deny to be my legs ; and a 
trifle breaks me down . . . not for a moment that your letter was a 
trifle — far from the contrary.' 

But at length he wrote more cheerfully : — 

' My dear D. M., — 

' May i come an feed with you of a Wensday next at 7 if i may ill 
come at 7 nex Wenesday about 7 in the evenin for im a early bird and fowls 
my own nest about ten on the outside, ive been at the seeside and i am 
better thank you for astin i were precious done up afore i went along of 
them pictures, never again i says never again will i be hurried and flustered 
like that but spend an evenin with you i certainly will and Wenesday at 
7 is my umble propojal 

' your affec, 

' Ned.' 
' My yph [wife] wants to know if yor mother is in London ? ' 

William De Morgan to Mrs. Btirne-Jones. 

' Dear Mrs. Ned, — 

' My Mummy I find has made up her mind to start for Hunstanton — 
pronounced Hunston — on Tuesday, so I send this line to prevent your 
trving to look her up. It would be no use your coming to find she had 
gone to Hunston, spelled Hunstanton — (by the bye, ought spelled to be 
spelt spelled, or spelled spelt ?).' 

Later that same year Burne- Jones made merry with the 
bride and groom over an appropriate letter of which they had 
become possessed during a brief holiday in Devon. 

Copy of a letter found on the beach at Sidmouth by 
Evelyn De Morgan. 

' My dearest Marey, — 

' i be verry well and appey to inform you that i be very well at 
present and i hope you be the same dear Marey — i be verry sorry to hear 
how as you don't like your quarters as i chant be able to look on your dear 
face so offen as i have done dearest Marey pure and holy meek and loly 
loveley Rose of Sharon. Dear Marey, dear Marey i hant got now Know 



THE FULHAM PERIOD 203 

particler noose to tell ye at present but my sister that marryd have got 
such a nice lettel babey, and i -wish how as that our littel affare was settled 
and we had got such a nice lettel dear two. 

' Dearest Marey i shall not be appy till then Dearest Marey pure and 
holy meek and loly lovely Rose of Sharon. Sometimes i do begin to 
despare as i am afEraid our not will never be tide but my Master have 
prommist i how as that when i git ye he will putt ye in the Darey yard to 
feed the Piggs and ge ye atin pens a week Dearest Marey puer and holey 
meek and loly lovely Rose of Sharon. i be comming over tomorrow to 
by the Ring and you must come to the stayshun to mete me and bring 
a pese of string with you the size of your finggar and be shure you don't 
make A miss take dear Marey 

' Father is A going to ge us a beddsted and Granny A 5 lb note to by 
such as washin stand fier irons mouse trap and Sope, and wee must wayte 
till wee can by carpetting and glass crackery ware and chiney. Dearest 
Marey pure and holy meek and loly lovely rose of Sharon, i be very appy 
to say our old Sow As got 7 young uns laste nite and Father is a going to 
ge us A roosester for our Weding Brakefest Dearest Marey pure and 
holey meek and loly lovely Rose of Sharon. So no more at present from 
your fewture and loving husband 

' William Taylor.' 

But even while through the light-hearted laughter of those 
days there rings no note of misgiving, not for long could the 
prosaic troubles of life be kept at bay ; and to understand the 
trend of events it is necessary to glance again at the history of 
De Morgan's work during the years immediately preceding and 
following his marriage. 

As we have seen, a potter is unfortunately in a different cate- 
gory from that of the painter of pictures in that he is not depen- 
dent for the expression of his art upon individual genius or 
individual effort. Into the materiaUzation of his creation enter 
faculties other than the artistic — endless commercial considera- 
tions and mechanical accessories which add complications to its 
development. Before he can see the fruition of his dreams, it 
is necessary to secure and maintain at heavy cost large premises 
for a factory and workshops, show-rooms in a suitable locality 
where the work produced can be brought before the eyes of the 
public ; a large staff of salaried coadjutors — efficient draughts- 
men to reproduce designs, workmen for each department, sales- 
men for the show-room ; while big kilns have to be kept going 
and apparatus requisite to the work constructed and recon- 
structed. ' I have just been half killed with anxiety over the 
new oven,' De Morgan wrote on Christmas Day, 1889 ; ' Anyone 
who wants to be really anxious had better build an oven as big 
as a house, and have it go wrong at the first firing ! ' And therein 
lay the crux of the situation— it was necessary to be prepared 
to face ever-recurring disaster and loss with a smiling equanimity 
and ready cash ; so that to a man with limited capital it meant 
a perpetual balancing between output and receipts for which De 
Morgan of all men remained the least suited. 



204 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

One of his important undertakings may be cited as a case in 
point. During visits to Rhodes, Cairo and Damascus, Lord 
Leighton had made a large collection of lovely Saracenic tiles, 
besides subsequently procuring some panels, stained glass, and 
lattice work from Damascus. These, on his return, were fitted 
into an Arab Hall at Leighton House, which, begun in 1877, was 
not entirely finished till 1881 ; and during its construction, it 
was found that the supply of old tiles was not sufficient to com- 
plete the work. De Morgan, therefore, was asked to remedy the 
deficiency by making replicas of the ancient tiles, as well as by 
carr}dng out the scheme of decoration with original tiles of appro- 
priate design. So perfect were his reproductions of the old 
Syrian ware both in colour and glaze, that it is impossible to 
distinguish between the ancient and the modern work ; while the 
wonderful blue, intersected by a line of gold, which he employed 
in the rest of the decoration vies in gorgeousness of hue with the 
productions of the oriental potters. Nevertheless, this achieve- 
ment, though an artistic, was not a financial, success, for he found 
himself five hundred pounds out of pocket by it ; a fact of which, 
needless to say, he never allowed Lord Leighton to be aware. 
But this was only one of many instances in which the heavy cost 
of production either exceeded the retail price that he felt it 
possible to ask, or else threatened to cripple the perfection at 
which, with the passion of a true artist, he aimed whatever the 
outlay. 

Into the breach, however, his wife stepped buoyantly. A 
large portion of her capital she devoted unhesitatingly to the 
support of the fluctuating business ; and when remonstrated 
with, her reply was the derisive comment : ' You don't under- 
stand the feu sacre ! ' Her enthusiasm was worthy of the man 
she had married ; and as Sir William Richm.ond points out, she 
would have staked her all ' to make one more splendid pot.' 
During the critical years which followed, there were times indeed 
when in the incessant anxiety which was her portion, she ad- 
mitted that the pottery was ' insatiable as Cerberus ! ' but never 
for one instant did her courage falter or her devotion slacken, 
never were her own comfort or her own needs allowed to weigh 
against the success of the venture in which she knew De Morgan's 
happiness to be involved. 

With the new Ufe infused into it, for a space the enterprise 
seemed, if not progressing towards financial success, at least 
heading off financial failure, and sufficiently prosperous to enable 
De Morgan to pursue without disaster the work on which his 
heart was set. It is obvious that when a man lives balancing 
himself perpetually on the edge of a precipice, the conditions are 
scarcely conducive to the best inspiration ; yet it is impossible 
here to mention in detail the various undertakings which he 



THE FULHAM PERIOD 205 

accomplished brilliantly throughout this period, including the 
fine decoration of the Czar's yacht Livadia, and that of Sir William 
Orchardson's house ; or the part which he played in inaugurating 
the Exhibition of Arts and Crafts. But so it was that whenever 
he seemed about to escape from the sordid considerations which 
fettered his powers of production, Fate dealt an adverse blow 
which effectually shattered all that he had been laboriously 
building up through years of patient striving. Thus it had 
been in the days of Fitzroy Square when the flames wrecked 
the manufacture of stained glass just when this was proving re- 
munerative ; and thus it was with the pottery at a moment 
when a fair measure of prosperity again seemed assured. 

The symptoms which the doctors believed to indicate that De 
Morgan was suffering from tuberculosis of the spine reasserted 
themselves ominously ; and a sojourn at Bath failed to allay the 
evil. The following spring, 1893, he was som.ewhat opportunely 
sent out to Cairo on behalf of the Egyptian Government to in- 
vestigate the facilities for promoting an industry in Egyptian 
pottery ; and the official report which he prepared in this con- 
nexion was the first original prose, other than correspondence, 
which he ever wrote. Meanwhile he endured increasing weakness 
and pain in the back ; and the doctors' fiat was at last decisive 
that, if his life were to be prolonged, for the future he must 
always winter abroad. 

The fact that the diagnosis which led to this verdict was 
entirely wrong, and that De Morgan was merely suffering from 
a severe sprain, adds an irony to the mistake which wrecked his 
career as a potter. At first, however, the full extent of the 
disaster entailed by such a banishment was not apparent. With 
the Spencer-Stanhopes already established in Italy, De Morgan 
and his wife naturally determined to go thither. Both loved 
Tuscany, and the thought of escaping from the gloom and fog 
of a London winter to a sunny climate appealed to them. There, 
in the clearer atmosphere of Florence, Evelyn's painting would 
not be hindered by days of darkness, and De Morgan believed 
that he could carry on his own work without much additional 
trouble. Still more, an event had recently occurred which made 
his absence from England during a portion of the year more 
practicable. 

In 1892 Sophia De Morgan died as she had lived, a pictur- 
esque and remarkable figure to the last. ' Of William's mother 
I could write from memories full of affection and admiration,' 
records Miss Morris. ' In earlier days she had been in the fore- 
front of the philanthropy and the schemes of education which 
the condition of the country at that time seemed to caU for at 
private hands. When we knew her she was a slender, trans- 
parent being, taU and fragile and worn by sorrows ; her dignity 



206 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

of bearing and the keen interest and pleasure she took in the life 
around her an example to all.' Yet despite the serenity of old 
age, there were times when Sophia De Morgan might well have 
posed as ' Our Lady of Sorrows ' — Our Lady when the sword had 
pierced her heart and the glory of motherhood had been turned 
to anguish. Since the sunny days at Fordhook when, as a 
young wife, she had tended her babies with such zealous care, 
she had seen, first her husband, and then five of her children — 
sons and daughters of rare promise — laid in a premature grave. 
Yet the faith which never left her in the nearness of the unseen 
world had supported her in each successive loss ; even while she 
exhibited few of the idipsyncrasies of the average mystic. Her 
brain was clear and penetrating ; she was full of interest in all 
the topics of the day — in literature, art and science ; while she 
was still alert to receive new impressions and to w'elcome an 
order of things to which she was unaccustomed. ' Far from 
being frightened at new ideas,' her daughter relates, ' she wel- 
comed with interest any new theory, even though it obliged her 
to do battle in the cause of some of her cherished behefs. Her 
powers of enjoyment never failed her, her love of Nature and the 
great pleasure she took therein. ... It is often said that the 
power of making friends departs in later life, but with my mother 
this was not the case ; she was able to form friendships and take 
up new interests at eighty with almost the vigour and warmth 
of eighteen. Naturally of an optimistic temperament, she dwelt 
often upon the great improvements of the times, unlike most 
old people, declaring that the world had grown better since her 
youth.' 

In 1887 she wrote her Reminiscences ; and five years later, 
an octogenarian with faculties unclouded and the love of life 
undiminished, she passed away peacefully in her sleep. ' Such 
an end,' records her daughter, ' as she would doubtless have 
desired, or, as she, according to her strong beliefs, would have 
said — such a passing to another life to begin afresh.' 

With her death, one of the strongest Hnks which bound De 
Morgan to England was severed ; and he turned his attention 
bravely to duplicating his business out in Florence, whence he 
hoped to direct and govern the distant factorj.^ in Fulham. 

' Thus,' relates Miss Morris, ' began that dual existence, 
tantaUzing and somewhat mournful to a man of warm affections 
and keen interests in his own country, but yet not without its 
compensations. Of late years Florence has been deteriorating 
with increasing speed ; but in 1893, though the city had already 
lost many of her greatest charms, she was still full of delight, 
and there were many corners of quiet beauty where the shadows 
of her noblest days yet lingered. The De Morgans settled down 



THE FULHAM PERIOD 207 

in the city, and spent the week-ends with the Spencer-Stanhopes 
on the Bellosquardo Hill, where the amenities of English villa 
hfe awaited them, among those stately gardens amid the pene- 
trating magic that hangs over the flowered terraces and scented 
pine-woods of the ancient Tuscan land. Here in Florence the 
designing was carried on, and that part of the work which could 
be done away from the factory in London. Picture a Florentine 
workshop ' betwixt sun and shade,' a long building in the garden 
fragrant 'Aith roses, growing Italian-fashion in their unimagin- 
able masses, where six or seven men worked under the most 
delightful conditions. Those who have seen Tuscan craftsmen 
at work know what they have inherited from that past of which 
we still know so little in detail. None of the men were trained 
painters — just common imhianchini, whom De Morgan taught 
to work in his method, and of them he said " he never had had to 
do with such hands and eyes." In his workshop, with a high 
standard of work and high wages, they quickly improved their 
worldly positions and became " signori " ; and all was well. We 
must suppose that they were equally happy later, when the 
influence had passed from them, and — still signori — they mod- 
elled figurini of ballet-girls and aU the cheap, humorous statuary 
from which the sensitive visitor to Florence averts his eyes in 
passing ; but there it is, so much fine teaching, so much admir- 
able skill, and the result as ephemeral as a summer day. . . . 

' The invention that enabled the pottery to continue under 
these changed domestic conditions was applied to the tiles, which 
formed a large part of the business, and which were now all 
painted in Italy. The design was not painted direct on the tile 
but on a whity-brown paper (they could not get it bad enough 
in Italy, the home of beautiful cartamano) stuck with a little soap 
on a slightly slanted piece of glass, the semi-transparency giving 
the draughtsmen greater power over the colour. When a quan- 
tity of the paintings were ready they were sent in rolls to the 
London factory ; here the painted paper was fixed on the tile 
and the whole was covered with glaze and fired, when the paper 
burned right away, leaving the paint on the clay unimpaired. 
Specimens of new design, or of a change in colouring, were sent 
over to Florence to be looked at and corrected if need be.' ^ 

Very thin tiles were likewise specially prepared and baked in 
London in order to be sent out by post to Florence so that De 
Morgan could judge of their quality and effect ; whUe drawings 
executed by him were as constantly sent over to Fulham, and a 
code was established by which he could telegraph instructions 
to the heads there during his absence. Most of the pots, how- 
ever, were painted in England, save a few which, later, were baked 

* The Burlington Magazine, August, 191 7, Article ' William De 
Morgan,' by Miss May Morris. 



2o8 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

in the kilns of Cantagalli as a commission. So the new business 
gradually got in order ; and as Miss Morris points out, there were 
compensations even in an exile which he soon found doubled his 
work and involved additional anxiety. 

For one, in what became the annual routine of that migration 
to Italy, he travelled out by sea, as he could not bear the long 
train-journey which jarred his spine ; and in the midst of his 
strenuous life, he grew to look forward with inexpressible plea- 
sure to the restful days of dreamy inactivity on board ship when 
the exhilarating breezes whipped his brain into greater activity 
and braced his delicate constitution. Like his wife, he had a 
passionate love of the ocean and its moods ; the ever-changing 
colour and mystery of its unfathomed def)ths, domed by a limit- 
less space of sky, stirred all the artist and the poet in him, and 
filled him with delight. ' When I die,' he said to her once, 
penetrated with the beauty of the scene at which he had been 
gazing, ' I should like to be buried at sea during a glorious sun- 
rise off the Islands of Majorca and Minorca.' 

Moreover, once established amid the roses and the sunlight 
of Florence, he appreciated the keen co-operation of the deft and 
nimble Italians, so quick to interpret mechanically ideas to which 
they had never previously been accustomed, and which, from an 
artistic standpoint, they yet entirely failed to understand. His 
own happy-go-lucky nature and his imperturbable good-humour 
awoke an answering chord in their hearts, so that they soon came 
to regard him with an adoring devotion ; while he, on his part, 
entered with zest into the spirit of the wayward Southern tem- 
perament. Thus when they were lazy, he named the particular 
pattern over which they had dawdled unconscionably the Pochi 
(forthwith wonderingly pronounced Pokey by the Fulhajn work- 
men), ' because,' he explains, ' they did so few in a week that I 
put them on piece-work on another new one, which had to be 
christened Molto ! ' and the jest, over which the imhianchini 
made merry like children, caused them to produce Moltos with 
a vigour to which no angry remonstrance could have moved 
them. 

In like manner, the week-ends snatched from work were 
looked forward to by De Morgan with increasing enjoyment. 
Spencer-Stanhope, the charm of whose rare personality endeared 
him to all, was a man of wit and originality of outlook, who was 
in sympathy with most of De Morgan's views of life and art, 
while the beautiful Villa where he lived was a centre alike for 
the English colony in Florence and for birds of passage, among 
whom were many acquaintances and comrades shared by him- 
self and De Morgan from a far-away past. Friends from Eng- 
land were constantly appearing unexpectedly in Florence ; and, 
among others. Miss Morris came to winter at the fourteenth- 



THE FULHAM PERIOD 209 

century Villa Mercedes, adding yet another to the many links 
which were binding the potter to the new home of his adoption. 

' Among all the affectionate remembrances of De Morgan 
stored with other treasures of memory,' she wrote many years 
afterwards, ' I like to linger over the ItaUan times and to feel 
that the beautiful side of his hfe in Florence must have been a 
comfort to a man wearing out brain and body over a business 
whose most triumphant successes did but spell anxiety and the 
prospect of commercial non-success in the long run. Every week 
the De Morgans left the clamour of the city and wound their way 
through the poderi and up the flowered terraces to Villa Nuti, 
where they could enjoy that vision of the noble valley WTapped 
in its luminous veils, and the cypress-clad poggi of the upland 
country that stretches south away. Happy in his English 
friends there, happy in the matter-of-fact, good-humoured Tus- 
can contadini, happy in the humble beautiful things of the frugal 
Italian life of the people, he could rest and absorb the " attain- 
able good" with that bearing of a philosopher that became him 
so well in later life. In another villa on the hill he was also 
affectionately welcomed. We would sit long after the evening 
meal watching the fire-flies mingle with the stars in tlie blue 
night above the Arno valley. At times the talk fell into friendly 
silence, and the nightingale's song and the scent from the rcse- 
bowers and the lily-hedges, seemed to weave more closely about 
us all that spell of sympathj^ that no trivial thing from without 
could ever break — nor ever has broken.' 

De Morgan had not been long established in Florence when 
he wrote to endeavour to tempt Burne-Jones to follow his plan 
of migration. 

William De Morgan to Edward Burne-Jones, 

' 15 lungo il mugnone, 

' Florence, 

' Nov. ijtk, '93. 
' Dear Ned, — 

' I said as how I was a-going to write and persuade you to come 
and winter here, and here's half the winter gone, and it's a hawful pity — • 
and there you are choking in the fogs, and not painting all the possible 
pictures by Burne-Jones, and you're the only cove that can do them that 
I know. 

' Well, I'm just a-%vriting now because my conscience struck me when 
I saw stuck up " App. — Studio " — only I haven't been about much 
owing to stopping in the house for a cold, so I hadn't opportunities for to 
see App. studios before. Well, I went and saw it and found it was nice 
and big, and only Seshento Shinkwarnter per annum, that is 50 L.,only 
in Italy 50 L. means about 26 pounds English. And I thought to myself 
what a pity Mr. Burne-Jones couldn't be a-painting in this here studio 
instead of — I stopped short there, because I don't wish to say anything 
against my native village. 

' However, I know it seems cruel to twit you with your circumstances, 
so I will say not a word about what the colour of the sky was overhead 

O 



210 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

when I came out from that studio, nor will I so much as hint what it was 
over the Carrara mountains, and I will draw a veil over those mountains 
that you may remain in ignorance of a particular complexion they got ofi 
of the sunset. These are things that it is only Christian to conceal from 
the Northern sufEerer. I could not wish you (for your own sake) to realize 
that it's along of the snow on the mountains that they get that colour, and 
that it doesn't come down here, and the flowers, fiori della terra, are a- 
blowing and a-gro\ving still, and you can buy any quantity you like for 
trentashinkwy at the stone bench along by the StTozzi. No ! my only 
doubt is if I oughtn't to \vrite and assure you that the whole place is 
changed into Bayswater — which it isn't and can't be, though they've done 
a good bit that way — and that it's a cold, cold place and a reeking nest oi 
typhoid, and a few more similar b — dy lies to console you for your winter 
quarters. We've done a good lot of stopping in the house, because some 
Americans left the window open on the rail in the Apennines, and I cotched 
cold — and all the while they thought we wanted it open, and they didn't 1 
Why did Columbus discover America, one may well ask ? 

' Give my love to your wife, and children, and children's children.' 

The answer to this letter has not survived ; but in a com- 
munication from Burne- Jones the following spring, reference is 
made to the fact that the latter had just accepted a Baronetcy. 
He had dined with WilUam Morris the night before the announce- 
ment appeared in the press ; but had not had courage to confess 
to so ardent a Sociahst the back-sUding of which he had been 
guilty, so that Morris only learnt the painful tidings from The 
Times the next morning. The subject was never subsequently 
referred to between the friends. 

Edward Burne-Jones to William De Morgan. 

' March, '94. 
• Dear D. M., — 

' [In pencil] Your letter was a delight. 
' This will not be a corresponding delight — for I am writing in a train — 
the only quiet place I can find at present, and it jumps and jogs ; but if I 
put off wTiting I shall never do it — that is my way. 

' So try and read this. — Fitz Burne-Jones I left in bed, for it was very 
early — it was only 9 o'clock — I didn't know it was so hard to write, or I 
shouldn't have begun. . . . 

' I wouldn't have begun many things if I had known they were so hard. 

' The picture I am doing, for instance ! 

' It represents, but no we won't go into that ' 

' Dear D. M.,— 

' I tried to write you a letter in a railway train yesterday, but 
couldn't get on with it, it jogged so — not the letter but the train. I 
enclose the precious fragment for its autographic value. If it had been 
written in ink it might have been worth ^d. sterling. 

' All you say in your letter is so. I should like to tell you privately 
that I accepted this haughty eminence to gratify Mr. Morris. I hope 
soon 1:o be able to write the Right Revd. Mr. Morris. His perpetual 
invectives against the bourgeois did at last, I confess, afEect my mind, 
and I believe now he's thoroughly gratiiied. . . . 

' We had a miserable month of January — a despair of a month. Every- 
body who wasn't dead was ill, and everybody who wasn't ill was ruined. 



THE FULHAM PERIOD 2ii 

... A worse time for calamities of friends has never happened to us, but 
we begin to breathe again. 

' It was nice hearing from you. My mind has been tormented aD 
the day, because some one asked me a riddle, and even told me the answer 
to it, and still I can't understand. 

' The answer is a real answer, and no nonsense I beUeve, but it's no 
good, I can't make it out, and here it is — 
' Ques. When is a mouse if it spins ? 
' Ans. The higher it gets, the fewer. 

' If I don't answer it before a month is out, I shall be lost. 
' All of us's loves to you all. 

* Yours affct., 

• E. B. J. 

' per se.' 

Meanwhile De Morgan found orders pouring in despite his 
absence from Fulham. ' We are now settled here,' he wrote, 
' and are desperately busy. Evelyn has got well to work, and is 
going ahead. I am muddling on without doing much execu- 
tion.' Perhaps one of the first events which brought home to 
him the difficulties occasioned by his absence from England was 
a commission which arrived from the Directors of the P. & O. 
liners. With the Czar's yacht as a precedent, they wished to 
have some of their ships decorated in similar fashion with tiles 
and panels ; and De Morgan received the intimation in Florence 
with mingled alarm and protest. 

' In the first place,' he wrote to his partner Ricardo, ' the. 
designs must either be figure pictures, or not. If not, I cannot 
conceive how our utmost resources of landscape, ship, fish, or 
inscription can compass such a subject as, for instance, Penelope 
and her suitors. We could have the web in front and a label to 
say that the suitors and Penelope are behind it, certainly ; and 
Ulysses in the Hall of Antenor could be managed in similar 
fashion — an outside view of the Hall with Ulysses inside ; but 
no Architecture could be worked into Polyphemus, on any terms ! 
If these are to be figure pictures, do you actually believe, in 
seriousness and sobriety, in the possibility of getting out of me, 
between this December and next August, seven huge pictures and 
eight large ditto containing sufficient indication of the human 
form, conventional or otherwise, to pass muster before a Com- 
mittee of P. & O. directors, or indeed to give satisfaction to any 
human creature, however uncritical ? But stop ! it isn't even 
August — it is by then that the whole work has to be finished, and 
the design completed and shown first ! ! ! No, clearly you never 
could have supposed that I could do these designs . . . and 
what grounds have we for supposing that any figure work, 
properly so called, can be executed by any of the artists we 
are employing ? ' 

None the less, he eventually agreed to undertake the worfe 
conditionally upon a reasonable extension of the time it was tc 



212 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

occupy, although the worry connected with carrying through 
such an undertaking, under pressure, and at a distance, can be 
dimly imagined. Six large ships were thus decorated by De 
Morgan, the Arabic, the Palawan, the Sumatra, the China, the 
Malta and the Persia, the designs being prepared by him in 
Florence and dispatched thence to Fulham by means of the 
process described by Miss Morris. 

' My pictures,' he wrote to Ricardo, ' represent a voyage of 
a ship round the world and all the strange dangers she meets 
with. First, she runs on a rock -then an earthquake shakes her 
off — then I propose to do her dangers from the Sirens and the 
Sea Serpent, only the Sea Serpent will also be attracted by the 
Sirens and eat them — so the ship will get off scot-free. If the 
Directors think this improbable, we must rationahze the topic 
down to correctitude. As far as it goes, now, there is no physical 
impossibiUty in the incidents — except to very narrer-minded 
blokes. 

' The big pictures are China, India, the Overland Route, Japan 
and you and me and Collcutt (of the P. & O.) tiger-hunting when 
we were in the army, in the Deccan and the Punjaub. The 
'ansum one is me. The two Islands with panthers and sich-Uke 
are, for instance, Surinam and Krakatoa — anyhow, nasty places 
for mariners to be driven on shore in — but capital sport for a 
rod and gun. These are done in a hurry and the geography will 
have to be sorter sifted out and arranged before we proceed. 
The blue in the friezes are enough to freeze the souls of any ship's 
crew—Made virtutibus — you and Fred and all.' 

' The difficulty,' he wrote later, ' has been to know what to 
do and how to do it, especially the quasi-naturahsms foreign to 
the nature of my designs — because their nature is to have no 
nature. The last panel contains : i. The ruin of a Corinthian 
temple ; 2. Penton\dlle Prison ; 3. Fiesole, and in the middle- 
distance, Eel-pie Island— it's very local.' 

Apart from this jesting, however, the designs when com- 
pleted were exceptionally fine, and also appropriate, as De Mor- 
gan had conceived the idea of portraying in them some of the 
cities and famous places which the respective boats were destined 
to pass in the course of their voyages. 

Thus one exhibited a vista of the white cHfifs and gi-een ver- 
dure of old England ; another, a view of the city of London 
intersected by the river Thames ; yet another, the same city in 
olden times with its Abbey and Cathedral depicted, and pictur- 
esque mediaeval houses fashioning quaint, crooked streets. A 
companion panel, in marked contrast, showed a scene of devas- 
tation in a distant part of the globe, with Nature in an.gry mood 
beneath a sullen sky ; a storm with hghtning flashing and towers 
falling, volcanoes smoking redly, and, in the lurid glow, a back- 



THE FULHAM PERIOD 313 

ground of purple mountains. Again, there were scenes of some 
imiling tropical land, with fruit-laden trees, tapering palms and 
prowling beasts ; and there were realistic landscapes tj^pical of 
different countries — China, depicted with wooded hills and 
yellow-sailed junks ; Japan, represented by a scene with Fuji- 
yama in the background, and in the foreground storks and fisher 
boats drawn with a clever suggestion of Japanese Art ; India, 
represented by the hunting expedition aforesaid, in which grey 
elephants and golden tigers formed a pattern instinct with life. 
Infinite in beauty and variety, the scenes were at once original 
and realistic ; and it is sad to reflect that all of these great ships 
with their unique decoration, as well as the Imperial yacht 
Livadia, now lie at the bottom of the sea. 

Meantime, in tragic contrast to the brighter side of his life 
in Florence, De Morgan was discovering more and more that 
endless vexations a.nd difficulties were entailed by his absence 
from Fulham, for which he had been only partially prepared. 
In the first place, the posts to and from Italy were erratic ; im- 
portant correspondence was delayed in transit, or a letter sent 
cancelling previous instructions arrived before the one which it 
was intended to revoke, thus creating confusion in the mind of 
the recipient. To endeavour to cope at all by post with the 
manifold complications of a business, the success or failure of 
which hung eternally on the hazard of the die, required almost 
superhuman effort. The chemical problems incessantly needing 
elucidation, the unaccountable vagaries of machinery and con- 
sequently of firing, the endless experiments in fresh methods of 
production— all demanded an exhaustive and personal super- 
vision for which correspondence was an ineffectual substitute. 
Added to this, there were the complications of accounts to be 
balanced between London and Italy, and minor matters which 
required tactful adjustment amongst his employees who, besides 
. petty differences which occasionally arose between them, suffered 
materially from the loss of his creative force and the personal 
magnetism of his presence now withdrawn during many months, 
so that something of the old vitaUty passed for ever from their 
labour. 

' I am as certain as I can be of anything human,' he remarks, 
' that lies, Passenger, Ewbank, Dring— all of them Mill work 
well in proportion as they feel in direct communication with me. 
And this even at the risk of postal delays creating a ripple of 
seeming contradiction between some things in two of my letters.' 
But after one of the annual transitions to Florence we find him 
complaining to a friend : ' The difficulty of the position forced 
upon me by these alternations of England and Italy is almost 
insuperable. I was during the last few weeks before leaving 
England completely bewildered by the demands of business, the 



214 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

desire to see what I could of my friends, and the inability to 
achieve satisfaction in cither point owing to physical exhaustion 
always supervening at unfavourable moments, just when I 
wanted to rush here or gallop there to sec after this, that or the 
other. We started ^vith everything undone and incomplete. . . . 
A new spine and new eyes would be welcome. , . . Forgive my 
apparent extinction for long periods ! I always seem to be 
somewhere else. This constant occupation swallows me up.' 

The story of the years which followed is a sorry tale of ever- 
increasing anxiety and of a brave spirit battling against odds 
which were overwhelming. Only those who have read De 
Morgan's private correspondence during this period can realize 
the mental strain which he endured, and can do credit to the 
unvarying patience and the unfailing, if pathetic, humour with 
which he met and mocked the ' slings and arrows of outrageous 
fortune.' There is a peculiar sadness in the thought that a man 
of his temperament, so full of contentment, so easily rendered 
happy, with gifts which added a glory to existence, was destined 
to have all his days poisoned by sordid cares. Yet so it was. 
Handicapped thus by delicate health, handicapped by the 
gnawing lack of capital and the exile which was proving fatal 
to his enterprise, he fought desperately for an Art which to him 
was dearer than life itself ; but always with the grim knowledge 
that the odds against him were ever increasing. 

Still more, in England, the effect of his absence was to deepen 
an impression amongst his employees, to which previous tradi- 
tion had long inured them, that the artistic, and not the financial, 
success of the undertaking was the sole aim which they must 
keep in view. That the existence of the one was dependent upon 
the other — that the retail price of their output must at least 
balance the cost of production if the work was to continue, was 
a point of view which, more and more, was lost sight of. An 
instance of this may be mentioned. A visitor who went to the 
factory in De Morgan Road on one occasion asked the price of 
a giant vase of gorgeous hue. ' £35 is the price we put on it,' 
replied the Manager, ' but ' — with some amusement — ' I doubt 
if anyone will give it ! and it cost us £80 to produce ! ' Some 
lovely pots were exhibited, and the visitor again inquired the 
price. ' We don't want to sell these,' was the reply, ' we could 
have sold them over and over again, but we like to keep a bit 
of good stuff to show Mr. De Morgan when he comes home ! ' 
The visitor's comment was ' C'est magni/igHe — fnais ce n'est pas 
le commerce ! ' 

Moreover, in the standard of artistic excellence a less high 
level was attained ; and of this De Morgan became painfully 
iware. ' As for myself,' he wrote, ' I am chiefly vexed at the 
ansettled conditions of my life makiner it impossible for me to 



THE FULHAM PERIOD 215 

contribute any sort of animation to the work, such as I formerly 
looked upon as the essence of the whole thing. . . . Investigation 
and experiment seem now to belong to a remote and happy past, 
and the business itself to have settled down, as far as " Art '* 
goes, into the incessant reproduction of patterns drawn by me a 
quarter of a century since. . . . Meanwhile it is the big idle 
capital that gobbles up the profit — the factory might be christened 
Jonah's whale ! ' ' The tradition at Fulham,' wrote Halsey 
Ricardo at length, ' as it has developed in consequence of De 
Morgan's bad health and necessary absence, is not now a good 
one ; and there is no one, there can be no one, who can pull it 
straight. The standard of efficiency has settled down into a 
dull undesired excellence ; the chaps have grown to think that 
conscientious industry is the whole duty of man. It is impossible 
to explain to them that the justification of handiwork demands 
something more than this ; and it is impossible, if they don't 
see it, either to quarrel with them or to blame them. But the 
result has lost the freshness and companionableness that D. M.'s 
own pottery used to have.' In certain instances, not only was 
De Morgan's original grace of line and fancy lost sight of, but 
occasionally, when one of his designs was introduced as a central 
idea, a surrounding decoration of more conventional type was 
added by painters, who were even known, for lack of initiative, 
to employ some commonplace pattern which they borrowed from 
an ordinary wall-paper ! While realizing this, Mr. Ricardo, owing 
to the pressure of his work as an architect, was only able to 
bestow on the factory a very divided attention ; and in 1897, 
Mr. Reginald Blunt was asked by De Morgan to supplement the 
essential supervision. 

' I was invited,' relates Mr. Blunt, ' for the next three winters, 
to supervise the doings at De Morgan Road as General Manager 
and " Chancellor of the Exchequer "... the arrangement 
helped to make possible the continuance of the factory, though 
the Chancellor's Treasury suffered from chronic depletion ; but 
the enforced absence of its chief was, of course, a severe handicap. 
The v/hole of the making and the firing of the pots, and the decora- 
tion of the latter had naturally to be done in Fulham, as well as the 
scheming of the orders, the building and repairs of the kilns and 
machinery, and the endless minutice of works management. . . . 

' I reported our doings and difficulties fully to Florence every 
week . . . and through all its worries and anxieties it was made 
delightful by De Morgan's unfailing kindness and by the charm 
and patience and all-pervading humour of his long weekly 
letters. ... It is, in some ways, a melancholy, though never 
depressing or despondent, record ; for monetary difficulties, 
chiefly due to the insufficiency of the initial capital, run like a 
black thread — or rather, perhaps a hampering barbed wire 



2i6 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

entanglement — through every page of it. Yet there is so much 
of pure jollity, of gentle humour and of genuine human kindli- 
ness in th^se natural and often hastily scrawled letters . . . 
[that they] help to give a little further insight into an inspiring, 
loveable, and most sympathetic character.' 

At first the letters, from which it is possible to give only a 
few random extracts, dealt with technicalities of the work which, 
even when not of interest to the general reader, serve to convey 
some faint impression of the range of De Morgan's activities. 

William De Morgan to Reginald Blunt. 

' LUNGO IL MUGNONE. 

' Nov. 14th. '97. 

' From what lies says about the big kiln, I imagine that if the floor 
holds out long erxough he will get it into complete working order, and run 
up the stock of plain tiles to cheapening point, which I look to as to a 
J.Iillennium — clay in barges of 80 tons from Stourbridge — a mill turning 
out 5 tons per diem of body — all the rooms full of workers, and 18/- a 
yard for turquoise tiles — that's my idea of things. As for there being 
no market, that's simple nonsense — There's the whole wide world, and 
what can one want more ! 

' I have not heard that the ship panels have reached safely but I 
presume that they have done so as I have not heard to the contrar5^ 

' Are you making use of the revolving grate at the factory ? [One of 
De Morgan's own inventions.] I mean has it been put in so as to revolve 
properly, and illustrate its smoke-consuming properties wth only Wallsend 
coal ? If not, please make Fred lies put it on a pivot so as to spin freely, 
see that the cliimney is clear, and give it a trial. If you like the looks of 
it, we could have a decent-looking casting made for the fire-bar portion, 
and have it fitted in the front room in Great INIarlborough Street, where 
it would go in very well. We could get a lot of people in to see it, under 
the pretext of curing the smoke, and then sell them tiles ! (A story about 
Dr. Johnson in a boat on the river naturally occurs to one.) 

' Re the red tiles, the diflEcrences are entirely due to firing — the thick- 
ness of the colour laid has no effect. . . .' 

' Nov. 30/A, 1897. 

' Re the lustre — of this I am certain, that every glaze that is susceptible 
at all can give^a good lustre. Because on a six inch tile every now and 
again one always gets a gradation passing from mere red to copper metal, 
such as you might rightly object to. 

' But between the extremes there is always the red reflection from a 
difierent local tint, which is usually at its best when the local tint is brown. 
The English potteries, where they make lustre, bring their results too much 
to mere blood-red and copper shine. 

' I should like very much next spring to have a regular campaign at 
lustre. Tell me if you think circumstances would allow of building the 
new kiln and I will send the drawing. There is no doubt that the g£ia 
kiln is the best form of lustre kiln, it is so manageable. 

' Re price of pots — [this in humorous answer to a request from Mr. 
Blunt respecting a basis for prices] — I know there is some way of doing 
this. Multiply the height in inches by the largest diameter in centimetres 
and divide by the number of hours employed. Multiply this re^.ult by the 



1 




Barrel-shaped Vase, with Domed Cover, 

Bequpathed hy Evelyn De Morgan to the Victoria and Albert Museum. 
It is in shades of jmriilc, l;oIi1 and silver lustre, with a pattern of vines. It was one of the last vases 
produced by De Morgan before he closed the factory, and he is depicted clasping it in the portrait hy 
his wife (see page 316). 

Height, 6f. Diameter, 4J inches. 



THE FULHAM PERIOD 217 

logarithm of the number of shillings per week, and it will give the price 
of the pot in halfpence — • But who shall discover it ? 

' The only thing is to make trials and see. 

' Suppose we try the contents of the pot as a gauge — say a shilling an 
ounce for decorated pots ? None of our pots contains less than 5 or 6 ozs. 
of waier, and none is priced under five or six shillings. I can't remember 
how many ounces go to a pint, so I can carry the inquiry no further. 
But see Ewbank and get him to make a record of how much a selection of 
pots contains per head and what the present marked price is. Perhaps 
it would be fair to consider the bulk of the pot as a factor. This could be 
done by weighing it dry and calculating the bulk of an equal bulk of water 
from the relative sp. grs. and adding it to the contents. Perhaps it would 
be wise to let it alone ! 

' I want chemistry to tell me whether lead tin and aluminium would 
give a good white glaze, analogous to the lead and tin used now for 
majolica — but harder. Worm this out of the Polytechnic. . . . 

' Later. 

' I am so horribly stupid in taking for granted that others know things 
because I do ! — I say to myself " Why / know that surely he m^jst ? In 
the case of the tin and aluminiums I was taking for granted that at the 
Polytechnic the commercial preparation of Calcine, or combined oxides 
of lead and tin, would be in the mouths of babes and sucklings. It is 
the only known method (recent discoveries perhaps apart) of causing the 
suspension of the white tin oxide in glass undissolved. It is like mechanical 
suspension in water, I take it. And the white enamels and Majolicas lack 
the hardness of crystalline glaze accordingly. Calcine is prepared by 
raking the scum ofi melted lead and tin. This scum is the calcine oxides 
which are true compounds or not according to the proportions of the 
metals. 

' Xmas. 1897. 

' It certainly speaks well for our perishing trade that £5^ worth of 
goods were sold last week, and that we are certain of purchasers for all 
those marked urgent in your hst and Ewbank's. It seems to me that 
my view is the correct one — that the poor trade is famished not for want 
of customers, but stock. . . . Ewbank tells me that the demand far 
exceeds the supply. . . . 

' What we have to do is to try the experiment (for the first time) of 
reducing our production cost by multiplying our output, and offering it 
in the market at a reasonable commercial profit. Wlien this has been 
tried and failed, we will talk over the desirability of giving up the fruits 
of all the labour and thought I have given during twenty years past to 
completing the process. 

' I have been very bad with sciatica — no possible attitude for sleep. 
But I'm better now — the dry weather is setting me up. 

' The merriest of Xmases to all — and as little fog as may be 1 

' Jan. 2nd i8g8. 

' I'm glad there is not a bill before Parliament to make it penal not 
to be able to reconcile accounts of kilns. Here are yours, Ricardo's and 
Jles's, which I cannot find belong to different kilns. 



Yours. Dec. 30th. 
We had a lot of salted 
and pock-marked tiles 
out of the last kiln or 
two, and a lot of blis- 
tered ones from a pre- 
vious kiln. 



Ricardo's. Dec. i8th. 
We are in a vein of bad 
luck at the factory, 
blisters, or salt, have 
damaged — very badly 
— more than J of the last 
glaze kiln. 



lies' s. Dec. loth. Big 
glaze kiln of plain 
colours. It was fired 
very nicely indeed — ■ 
quite free from salt. 
Dec. 15th. Small glaze 
kiln of painted pottery 
very good. 



2i8 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

' I incline to the opinion that your intermediate statement is the 
safest to lean on. Re blisters — I have never been able to trace these 
to anything but rather too quick a heat at first. It is just the first flare 
of the wood that does it. When they have dried very slowly they are 
liable to it, I believe. 

' Jan. 8th. 

' The blistering of tiles seems to break out in my absence always. . . . 
It is due to a spontaneous separation of colour from ground or paint from 
paper, it is a thousand to one it depends on the warmth of combination 
in the silicate. If so, tiles warmed to over boiling point immediately 
after laying ought to show the defect very much less than those that dry 
gradually. Try two halves of one lot each way. 

' Jan. J 4th. 

' The vicious appearance of so much modern earthenware is due to the 
dry lathing much more than to the tint of the body — and none can vary 
tints ad lib by solution of colouring salts. The worst of it is that most 
of the Wenger bodies have a little cobalt in them, like washer-woman's 
blue in whitewash, where only yellow ochre ought to reign supreme. 

' I shall be sending tliis week the Daisy and Anemone patterns for the 
great Rothscliild. I understand he wants turquoise blue to be turquoise 
blue and not green, like Ally Sloper's boy who wanted tea for tea — and 
declined whiskey. 

' If the Devil don't take the Fulham Vestry, he don't deserve to be 
devil no longer, as the Lincolnshire farmer said. 

' At present the undigested errors of our early system, that of baiting 
for small orders with samples, lies heavy on our commercial stomach. 

' Going in for plain tiles on a large scale at low prices is my idea, and 
has been ever since we built a large factory in '88 expressly for that very 
purpose. 

' Clean and prompt firing, and low prices, are the solution of our 
difficulties. . . . 

' No kiln can possibly have too much draught. Whatever the local 
heat of the fires may be, it can be tempered by admission of air before it 
enters the flues, and an excess of atmosphere in the flue is good and sulphur- 
destroying. 

' I believe many of these colour troubles would be solved if we could 
have wood kilns instead of coke or coal. If I had unlimited resources I 
would build one straight away. And the wear and tear of a wood kiln 
would be less, owing to the formation of less clinkers. 

' The presence of the green tiles does endanger the blue ones without 
a doubt, but we can always have a special kiln for each colour. I have 
never thought the amount of harm done by the green to the blue was 
enough to make special efforts against it needful. It certainly is not the 
cause of the unexplained variations in the turquoise, as we can get these 
in kilns with no green. 

' Feb. ^rd, 1898. 

' I discern in the Pot [one which had been sent out for his inspection] 
a confirmation of what I have inferred and been hoping, viz. ; that the 
lustre kiln has not been behaving very badly. The present defects of 
our lustre are not in the process, but in the ground — I do not know how it 
is, but no really good thing ever comes from the Potteries — and it's stranger 
in the case of Wenger's enamel than in other things, because I fancy 
Wenger doesn't weng it at all, but gets it from some foreign Wenger. If 
it's made in Germany, that of course would account for it, as all German 
excellence goes into lead pencils. 



I 



THE FULHAM PERIOD 219 

' March ist. 

' Re your inquiries about lustre process — (i) The test pieces ought to 
be at their best at the moment of stopping. But if stopped too soon the 
first lustre (which is the best) burns out, and remains pale. There is one 
moment (if one could always spot it) when it would be best to cool the muiSe 
as suddenly as possible. Weak lustres, long fired, give the best chance 
for deliberation, whereas strong lustres fire quick, but jump at the end. 

' (2) My experience is that the strength depends on the strength of the 
mixture, not on the thickness. One sees no brush-streak in the colour, 
or rarely. Nevertheless there is a thinness at wliich quantity tells, only 
within its limits you get little lustre, toned red. 

' (3) The more experiments the better ... I should like to have a 
lustre campaign this summer, if not worried into my grave. 

' March ijth. 

' I hope the weak lustres have gone or will go well. All that's necessary 
for their success is a continued low temperature and much longer firing. 

' Bismuth makes very good and very soft glazes, but they are dear. 
I never investigated them properly. 

' I don't like the red on the pottery tiles, nor on any hand glaze. It's 
too violent and butcherous. But a glaze containing some soda — say the 
materials of the hand glaze we use on the tiles mixed with tin calcine might 
do very well. 

' March 29, '98. 

' The colour and quality of lustre are absolutely due to firing and not 
a bit to thickness of colour. If you paint several thicknesses of colour on 
one tile you will find no practical difference between any two above the 
thickness of a mere transparent wash, and this will be motley and weak. 

' If the new kiln salts, it will (according to my religion) be that the 
fires have been too heavily stoked. Small bright fires are the game. 

' Are the small-pox marks over or under the colour ? If under, just 
make a trial of dusting black lead over the surface of the paper before 
sticking. Why the ordinary tiles should play tricks I can't imagine, if the 
Fulham ones don't, for I can't find that there is any difEerence in the method. 

' I am sending a frieze of Cherubs' heads, which must have a harder 
glaze than usual, and thin, or they'll all float up. . . . They are painted 
in colour mixed with pure gum Arabic. ... I thought I couldn't work 
on the tiles now because of old age — but it was the Dextrine in the gum. 
I expect it will turn out that, what with retarded work and blistering, 
this alone has cost us hundreds of pounds. 

' March 30 /A. 

' I don't understand the disappearance of the luck in Glazes. Last 
year lies did very well. However, it is much the same at Cantagalli. 
NATien he goes the lustre deteriorates.' 

Gradually the letters wax more despondent. ' I am glad you 
take such a sanguine view of the work,' he writes, ' my view is 
• — sanguinary ! I observe that our tiles now cost us more to 
make them than our calculated expense in Chelsea 20 years 
ago. Ewbank's reports look very poor as to finances. Don't 
soften anything. Show it me at its worst. I fear you are having 
a dreary time, but " just now " is always dreary ! ' 

In another letter he writes : ' What I said about goodwill was 
only a way of putting the unpleasant fact that if if or something 
isn't there to represent it we have lost £^,112. Of course we 
have ! . . you see we never have had a system of accounts. 



220 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

with mine or anyone else's.' Again, he propounds an idea, the 
simplicit}^ of which is evidently unconscious : ' As I shall have 
nothing coming in from the home factory, and I am nearly 
cleaned out, / am endeavouring to run the concern here [in Florc7ice] 
at a small profit, with a view to making sometliing for myself ! ' 
This is obviously put forward as a notion commendable for its 
novelty. In one of his communications to Halsey Ricardo about 
this date, he further remarks with a humour which probably 
failed to appeal to its recipient, ' I am sure you will be surprised 
and pleased to learn that I owe you a sum of money, even as I 
am surprised and disgusted. But then your delight will be 
qualified by hearing that I cannot pay ! ' 

Again in the spring of 1908 we find him writing tragically : — 

' I have done my feeble best, but genius alone could have handled th« 
position — or capital I Neither was forthcoming. 

' For the moment, the men are going on again heroically on the terms 
that I am to scud money when I get it — I wish I may get it. It is all 
such a great pity, for we had lately got over some bad difficulties in pro- 
cess, notably colie-sulphuring and slow tile-colouring. I shall go on 
until absolutely strangled off, and execution threatened. . . . 

' Browning says, " Sudden the worst turns the best to the brave." 
I wonder if effrontery is a good substitute for courage in this connexion, 
as if so I certainly deserve a good turn from Fate ! ' 

The transition to London in the summer of 1898 did not tend 
to raise his spirits, judging by the unwonted note of melancholy 
in the following letter : — 

William De Morgan to Mrs. Morris. 

' Sept. 19, '98. 

' Chelsea. 
' My dear Mrs. Morris, — 

' It was very kind of you to send me the little book. If I am to 
live to be my father's age when he died, I have still ten per cent, of my 
life before me, and in that time my memories of the nine-tenths gone 
before must needs make a great deal of whatever is happy and satisfactory 
in them. For indeed it does seem to me now that the most part of what 
made me look forward to coming back each spring to England has disap- 
peared. 

* The great, fortunate friendships of my life, of which we know, have 
left gaps nothing can fill up, especially as our long absences each winter 
cut me away, more than most, from our fellow creatures in this country. 

' I should have liked to have come to see you in the comitry again, at 
the old place — but really the way long railway journeys knock me about, 
and the stress of steering my perplexing business combined, never let 
me go so far as to entertain the idea or to find out whether I was, or was 
not, a bit cowardly about coming. The journey from my brother-in-law 
in Devon made my spinal column feel very unlike Cleopatra's needle ! 
and I was as it were obliged to make myself promise not to do so any 
more. None the less I bike down to the factory daily, to heax which of 
our debtors has gone banlarupt, and what goods have been returned on 
our hands with scorn and loathing — that's business ! 

' My love to you and Jenny and the old house. 1 wish we might look 



THE FULHAM PERIOD 221 

forward to seeing you in Florence some day — (tliat reads like an invitation 
— but lor bless you, we never have room to swing a cat !) ' 

As the shadows deepened round the doomed factory, the 
threatened retirement of Halsey Ricardo from the business and 
the consequent disintegi-ation of a portion of the capital which 
financed it made disaster imminent. Even at that juncture it 
was pointed out to De Morgan that if he could remain for one 
winter in England this would probably turn the tide in his 
ebbing fortunes ; but his wife was obdurate. Ruin stared her 
in the face, but that prospect was less to be dreaded than the 
alternative which confronted her. ' I would rather lose every 
penny I possess,' she wrote decisively with her usual selflessness, 
' than, in view of the doctor's verdict, that Wilham should run 
the risk of one extra month in England.' 

During the autumn which followed, the Duke of Bedford 
ordered panels for the Woburn dairy, and these De Morgan 
designed out in Florence with a frieze in gay-hued parrots upon 
a pale blue ground. ' I have just completed a lovely droring for 
the Duke's dairy based on our falcon panel,' he writes, ' It will 
keep the factory going for a whole month, but will take three 
months to execute. I have my doubts of that's paying — I have my 
doubts of all accepted orders paying — even the biggest.' In the 
following January, 1899, he says : ' The Bedford tiles are decided 
on and the sketch will be returned to the factory. I am going 
to have it out here to make a new cartoon from, and then mean 
to send it back to Fred Passenger to be executed in London. I 
am dosing the chaps out here with more than enough new work. 
I am at work on big figures and various sundries at this moment.' 
And he concludes with a recrudescence of hope. ' Judging from 
the various reports, things must be going on well in production. 
It's good to hear of any lustre pots turning out well ; ' while he 
adds with undiminished enthusiasm : ' I have endless chemical 
problems for solution, which I have puzzled at since 1873.' 

When the time came round once more for his annual migra- 
tion to England, moreover, he wrote full of renewed vigour. 

' Levanto, Riviera Ligure, 

' Ap. soih. 
' Our boat says it sails from Genoa at noon on Wednesday. We are 
here because we thought three or four days' holiday by the way would 
do us both good. We have liit on a place of most amazing loveliness, 
and a very good hotel. I am simply eating and sleeping and taking long 
walks — so I shall (I hope) be in a state of diabolical activity and aptitude 
when I arrive in London on the loth or nth. I shall need to be, for the 
task I propose to myself is no less than that of forcing the concern into a 
paying form. I am satisfied that we can do it, from the fact that it has 
done no worse than it has in these last shopless months. We shall see ! 
If we are to have a financial collapse outright, I hope it will bring itself 
home to us immediately — the sooner it happens the more time I shall 
have in England to get straight again. 



222 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

' Meanwhile 1 hope to have credited the Bay of Biscay with the smallest 
possible investments on my part. A rivederci ! ' 

But the summer which lay before him proved a yet more 
disheartening battle against overwhelming complicalions. The 
constant payments at an ever-increasing loss were a drain on his 
resources which absorbed all his available funds. Again and 
again comes the plaint : ' Our poor little factory is starved not 
for the lack of customers but of output. . . . The world would 
swallow up ten times our present output if we were in contact 
with it — hut we can't produce ! ' For the difficulties with which 
he had to contend moved eternally in a vicious circle. To 
financial success, production on a large scale was first impera- 
tive, yet to produce on a large scale first necessitated iinancial 
prosperity. ' All one wants,' he wrote pithily, ' is cash to save 
cash. None can afford the luxury of economy but the capitalist.' 
Yet he adds as a sorry jest, ' I have no intention of leaving the 
concern till the concern leaves me — though I do not go as an 
asset with it ! ' The final retirement of Halsey Ricardo, the 
partnership with whom was dissolved in January, 1899, seemed 
to make inevitable its extinction. None the less, to abandon his 
life-work when, after years of arduous struggle, he had attained 
to an undreamed of artistic excellence, was to De Morgan a 
conclusion from which thought turned aside. In truth, it is 
pathetic to reflect that, at this crisis, his own powers were at 
their zenith — powers of invention and achievement, wrung out 
of the accumulated knowledge and labour of years. ' MTiile the 
pottery failed financially,' wrote his wife later, ' the last pieces 
of lustre-ware he produced in the dying factory were the best 
he had ever done.' 

Nevertheless, when some one ventured to condole with her on 
the incessant anxiety she was enduring, and further declaimed 
against the unsatisfactoriness of life in general, Evelyn parried 
the proffered sympathy in typical fashion. On a post card she 
wrote : — 

' Look-a-here, Mary Anne, 
You stop your complainin'. 
I know that it's rainin' 
As hard as it can. 
But what are you gainin' ? 
Is't the Lord you are trainin' ? 
Well — He ain't explainin' 
His reasons to Man ! 

' / find these lin^.s very bracing I 

• E. D. M.' 

Once again a way of escape was opened out to De Morgan 
when the firm of Morris & Co. proposed to him that he should 
remain in England and give them the monopoly of his output ; 
but apart from the state of his health, which precluded accept 



THE FULHAM PERIOD 223 

ance, to work on other than independent lines would have been 
unpalatable to him. And still he stubbornly refused to recog- 
nize defeat. ' R. and W.' he writes, ' both pelt me with proofs 
that I ought to wind up the concern, and not begin again. Pos- 
sibly they are right ; but I shall take my own course, and risk 
all consequences. All the misfortunes I have ever met with, I 
have afterwards found I should have avoided if I had relied on 
my own convictions. I'm afraid I'm almost too old now to 
profit much by the lesson— but better late than never ... I 
hope the gods will provide ! ' 

But the gods, according to their wont, were deaf or callous. 
With the autumn came the Boer War, bringing consequent de- 
pression to trade, and further adversely affecting a concern which 
was slowly bleeding to death. Drastic retrenchment became 
imperative ; and the show-room in Great Marlborough Street 
was first given up, though this De Morgan did not regard as an 
unmitigated evil. ' How to get rid of G. M. S. without bad con- 
sequences,' he wrote cheerfully, ' except by change of premises, 
was always to me a problem : — 

' For years I've longed for some 
Excuse for this revulsion ; 
Now this excuse has come — 
I do it on compulsion ! ' 

But ere long ten hands had to be discharged from the factory, 
and the dismissal of men who had worked for him well and 
loyally throughout all the vicissitudes of his former career — who 
had followed him from Chelsea to Merton and from Merton to 
Fulham — always looking upon themselves as an integral part of 
a great whole, went nigh to breaking his heart. With his in- 
curable optimism, however, he continued to regard present 
disaster as merely a phase from which the factory would event- 
ually re-issue endowed with new life. ' It is melancholy,' he 
wrote, ' to think my men should be driving omnibuses. What 
I am curious to see is if, when any of them come back (if they 
do) they will be happy, and won't find it dull by comparison.' 
Yet an almost worse situation had to be faced in Italy when he 
found that he could not meet the arrears of wages and was forced 
to stop the work of the keen-witted, eager Italians who had 
laboured for him so happily in their rose-wreathed workshop. 
To a man like De Morgan who was generous to a fault and scru- 
pulously punctilious in his payments, the knowledge that he was 
depriving men who had served him faithfully of their livelihood, 
and that he even owed them money, for the pa3mient of which 
he depended upon uncertain supplies from England, filled him 
with acute distress. To Mr. Blunt he wrote sadly : — 

' Florence, 

' Oct., 1899. 

* I have had to resort to a desperate measure to raise ^5 for the chaps 



224 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

here, lest they go dinnerless. I have written a cheque on my bank know 
ingly an overdraw. ... I should tliink some cash must have come it 
[in London], though if it hzis, there will be very little left for the rest o: 
the quarter. Our very existence hangs on the completion of the Bedforc! 
panels now, and this will scarcely tide us over Xmas. Who would be ar 
Art potter ? ' 

Nevertheless, his old fun bubbles up again : — 

' Ewbank's account of sales is — 

'*• Turnover this week has amounted to £ , making £ only 

as yet, for the months 

' Of course, he may have forgotten to fill in the amounts I 

' October 2C)th. 

' Perhaps I ought not to have come away without winding up. Bui 
doing so would have meant sacrificing the Woburn panels altogether. . . . 
My only hope is that when the place is actually closed, the very fact may 
lead to some new possibilities. . . . 

' I can't bring myself to believe in our final extinction — especially 
just at a time when the press is beginning to be mighty civil. I saw 
myself spoken of in print lately as " this renowned tile-maker." Bless 
us and save us I ! who would be a renowned tile -maker after that ? 

' If the Woburn work tells well, and is really satisfactory, I have no 
doubt I can make a special application to the Duke, and he'll write a 
cheque ^vithout looking at his pass-book ! All turns on that 1 ' 

With the cessation of his own ability to fire the pottery, De 
Morgan asked the firm of Cantagalli to complete some pieces at 
which he continued to work in desultory fashion.^ Thus they 
painted for him a great vase of his design, the material employed 
being their own — a production which proved unusual in appear- 
ance. Although rich and deep in decoration, it is entirely unlike 
his more vivid work, the whole being painted in a minor key — 
possibly in harmony with the then depression of his mood — a 
scheme of purples, black and grey-blue. Another vase which 
bears the signature of both De Morgan and Cantagalli is a copy 
of the old Urbino, showing a design in pale relief of the infant 
Bacchus piping and dancing, with snakes entwined on a back- 
ground of brilliant rose-pink lustre. A decoration of vine-leaves 
and grapes surmounts the whole, and the handles are fashioned 
out of twisted snakes the hue of lapis-lazuU. Besides this, 
Cantagalli fired certain pieces on which De Morgan experimented 

' ' With regard to the Italian position of the factory,' wrote Evelyn 
De Morgan in 191 7, 'I want to emphasize that there was no sort of 
connexion whatever with the De Morgan work in Italy and the Fabrica 
Cantagalli. Some time after Signor Cantagalli's death, my husband got 
them to paint a vase from his designs, also about four or five dishes, the 
materials employed being their own. These designs, executed by them 
for him, were not in any way connected with the output of their own firm, 
merely an order given to them by him. With regard to the experiments 
on a paraffin ground, the one successful plate was painted by him 
himself and he employed liis own men on other attempts of the kind, 
but merely sent the dishes to be fired in the Cantagalli kiln — Cantagalli's 
people having no more part in the experiment than Doultons have when 
a sculptor sends his terra-cotta work to them to be fired.' 




The God Pan 

William De Morgan fecit 

In coloured pottery, with goat-ears and horns ; crowned with a chaplet of ivy-leaves. 
Height, 23 inches ; width at base, 15 inches. 

[In the possession of Mrs. Stirling. 



THE FULHAM PERIOD 225 

with a ground prepared with paraffin, which he found gave a 
greater facihty to the painter and enabled the colours to flow 
like oil. Four or five dishes were done for him in this method, 
some of which show mermaids with waving hair, or Neptune and 
his Queen disporting in sea-blue waves ; and one which exhibits 
a fine design of the infant Achilles riding on Cheiron, but in 
which it is curious to note that the workmen of Cantagalli have 
reproduced the design with the bowstring on the wrong side of 
the Centaur's arm ! To this period may also be assigned a huge 
head of the god Pan, in which the saturnine, mocking expression, 
and the penetrating eyes of pale blue, seem full of a sinister life. 
This was presumably modelled by Mrs. De Morgan, decorated 
by De Morgan, and fired by Cantagalli. 

But even with this intermittent employment which kept his 
thoughts and fingers temporarily occupied, the depressing sense 
of the failure of his life-work could not be kept at bay. Christ- 
mas, spent as usual with the Spencer-Stanhopes at Villa Nuti, 
was darkened by the anxiety which was crushing him. This lay 
like a nightmare at the back of his mind, which the despondency 
engendered by the war served to accentuate. 

' Villa Nuti, 

' Xmas, 1899. 

' I am staying here for Xmas [he wrote to Mr. Blunt] — I have a card 
from you, but I suppose there really is nothing to tell and that the business 
is torpid. . . . There is nothing here to make Xmas any better than in 
London — indeed I should imagine that for us English it is worse. We 
are kept in a constant fever by false alarms, cooked up by a press which 
always has a glee in reporting news in a sense disadvantageous to us. 
Then the anxious, expectant faces of my men thrown out here, to whom 
I unfortunately owe money still which I can't pay, make an unpleasant 
incident. I am trying to get them some work in decoration, but it is 
only in the summer that much of this sort of work is going about. . . . 

' I am hoping to have from you a general statement of how we stand. 
Anyhow I wish you a Xmas not further clouded than we are at this moment 
of writing, and evsn perhaps with a silver lining creeping round the 
cloud's corner. 

" II ^A, igoo. 

' As I understand matters now, we (the business) have just enough 
owing to us to carry through till Lady-day on the reduced scale. If I 
diminish this by 50 now, either I shall have to find another 50 by March 
or we shall have to close the factory. Well — what must be must ! Any- 
how, if I cannot have 50, it is clear we are stopped. Just look at the 
Italian account — it's awful ! 

' Nevertheless, the strategy is all to hold on, although the field tactics 
all point to surrender. . . . But for the moment I am owing money to 
the men here still (about ;^2o) and have nothing to live on, so that 50 ia 
a sine qua non, though it isn't a cum qua mulhim. 

' The chaps here are languidly at work on K.L. with blue background, 
which I have told them I may not be able to buy of them ; and are harder 
at work on wall-stencil patterns. I am hoping to get them decorative 
work to do, and tliis will be a great convenience because I shall be able 
to get tile-work done when wanted, by special job, not have to keep them 
all going always. I wish something of the kind were more possible in 



226 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

England — if only the chaps could groce greens, or mongue iron, or victual 
licentiously, while employing odd hours on painting. 

' Feb. 8th, 1900. 
' If the pottery is finally strangled by the Boers, I shall have to take 
to something else permanently — but this will be compulsion, not choice. 

' Feb. gth. 
' The cheque has arrived — and I'm delighted. For I had exactly ten 
cents in the world, and two more halfpenny papers would have reduced 
me to beggary ! ' 

By January, 1903, we find him writing : ' I have had to close 
at Fulham temporarily (and the tempus may be a long one), as 
the wages must stop until our arrears are got the better of. . . . 
Of course it's not a cheerful way of conducting business. . . . 
If I were in London it would all be different — but then I'm not.' 
At the end of 1904 he wrote to Mackail : — 

Via Lungo il Mugnone, No. 19, Florence. 
' Dear Jack, — 

' Please return me a true Bill for that — I am gradually breaking 
in all Florence to call me by that name — and hope to be universally 
accepted as such before I fall due. 

' But it is not of that I am going for to sing — but of an inquiry ascribed 
to you by Mary about the valuable original drawings of tiles and things 
that an unfortunate misconception of my powers has betrayed me into 
maldng during the whole of the present century and a quarter of last. 
These are mostly assets of D.M. and Co., in liquidation ; and that Firm's 
]VIr. De Morgan wants to have them himself. He intends to resume 
manufacture as soon as ever he sees his way to replacing the capital that 
has been withdrawn from the Fulham turn-out. If D. M. and Co., to 
whom they belong, decide to offer these splendid productions to a grateful 
Nation, I shall raise no objection. But the half of the Firm now in 
Florence says she won't agree to give up anything that will contribute to 
a re-animation of the concern, and is leaving most of her capital in until 
we return, to keep the life in it till better may be. You see she is Cer- 
amicably disposed towards it. 

' Seriously, the things have no value, and if there were no chance of 
their being used again, I am sure all who are concerned would raise no 
objection to their being made a bundle of and sent to the Department, 
to use as a warning or an example as might seem best. But four or five 
of my old workmen are keeping things together on a sort of co-operative 
system till my return in the Spring gives reconstruction a chance.' 

For a space the reconstructed factory dragged on a pre- 
carious existence with De Morgan, lies and Fred Passenger as 
co-partners ; then Fate dealt the final blow. ' The last shell was 
pitched into the works,' relates De Morgan with the reticence 
of tragedy, ' when neuritis gripped my business thumb and 
stopped m}^ drawing. I threw Art aside after forty odd years.' 
In 1905 he wrote : ' My old joke with Morris about the Fictionary 
which became a Factory is now reversed. Sic transit ! ' 

In a later letter he pronounced a final requiescat in pace over 

the hopes and ambitions of so many years : ' My former works,' 

he says, with a gentle irony, ' are now the source of that far 

more useful stuff, Blue-Bell Polish ! ' 

« « « * « 



THE FULHAM PERIOD 227 

Thus ended De Morgan's career as a Potter. When, how- 
ever, his own connexion ceased with the manufacture of the 
ware which bore his name, he still allowed his men to continue 
working at his designs, by his methods. ' A good many pots,' 
he wrote as late as 1914, ' decorated from the same drawings, by 
the same painters and fired in the same way, have been done of 
late years, but on a Staffordshire ground.' These — which may 
be termed posthumous works of the De Morgan factory — have, 
however, for the most part, a hardness of glaze and a lack of 
elasticity in the interpretation of the designs apparent to those 
who have studied the original ware executed under the hand and 
eye of the master ; and it is to be regretted from an artistic 
standpoint that, with a generosity which scorned any monopoly 
of his discoveries or his designs, De Morgan countenanced the 
production of work which, as far as his personal association with 
it is concerned, may be termed spurious. He took the precau- 
tion, indeed, to write to his former manager, Ewbank, as follows : 

' March i^^th, 1911. 
' No signature must appear on the ware that can possibly mislead 
any purchaser as to its origin. Otherwise I should like it to have the full 
advantage of the fact that it is executed by the same men, and has my 
cordial wishes for its success. All legitimate advantage would be got by a 
Ewbank, lies and Passenger stamp.' 

Nevertheless, a confusion has not unnaturally arisen at times 
between the original and the posthumous De Morgan pottery, 
and therefore it may be as well to append some of the distinctive 
marks belonging to the different periods of its manufacture, 
though these were utilised principally in connexion with the tiles. 

Dates, locality of manufacture and distinguishing marks of De 
Morgan tiles : — 

Cheyne Row and Orange At this period De Morgan was not 
House, Chelsea. 1872- maldng his own biscuit : Sign, bars at 

1 881 the back of the tiles. 

Merton Abbey. 1 881 -1888 . Sign De Morgan, in a lozenge, or an 

illustration of the Abbey in which W. 

D.M. carries on the M. of the Merton. 

It reads like W. De Merton Abbey. 

Sands End, De Morgan Name written round a Tudor rose with 

Road, Fulliam. 1S88-1899 five petals — Wm. De Morgan & Co., 

Sands End Pottery, Fulham. After 
the partnership was dissolved signed 
De M.I 898 — not in a lozenge but in 
a circle. He added the so-called tulip 
mark given in Chaffers. 
In partnership with lies and D.J.P. During this period he built a 
Passenger. 1 899-1 905 gas furnace instead of coke. 

1905. De Morgan's connexion with the manufacture ceased. lies 
and Passenger subsequently decorated and refired some pottery in W. De 
Morgan's designs ; marks C.P. & P.P. 

Nevertheless, out of the extinct factory arose a monument to 
its memory which, as such, may be regarded as a National asset. 



228 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE I\IORGAN 

Mention has been made before of the fact that De Morgan 
had successfully manufactured tiles which would stand exposure 
to the vagaries of a changeable climate. At the date when his 
connexion with the pottery came to an end, Halsey Ricardo was 
employed in constructing a house for Mr. Debenham in Addison 
Ro^d, which he intended should represent two achievements — • 
firstly, a building immune from the destructive effects of a city 
atmosphere, and secondly the inauguration of an architecture to 
be expressed in forms of colour. Out of the derelict factory he 
therefore selected a mass of the finest tiles by De Morgan, and 
employed these both externally and internally, from basement 
to roof, in the decoration of this house. 

The result is a structure, the striking exterior of which is 
surpassed by the wonderful colour-scheme within. A long and 
picturesque entrance-loggia, with columns of granite, tiled in rich 
blue-green, and terminating in a lunette of flying cranes, leads 
to a dwelling, the walls of which are lined with tiles in the same 
peacock colouring, and with panels, friezes, and lunettes of rich 
and elaborate design. Passages and archways show a vista of 
gorgeous hue like some magic Eastern Palace of Dreams. In the 
centre rises a hall roofed in by a glittering dome of mosaics ; 
archways and pendentives of gold mosaic throw into bold relief 
the rich oriental tint of the walls and the frescoes. In the corri- 
dors beyond, duplicates of the vanished ships' panels may be 
seen, great eagles and birds of prey, strange fancies in beast life, 
rare designs in trailing leaf and glinting foliage. Moreover, 
against the prevailing brilliance of the background, here and 
there stand great cabinets full of age-old pottery from Persia and 
Asia Minor which shine with a mysterious pearly radiance pro- 
duced by long burial in the earth. And it is interesting to note 
how these gems of ancient Art are in harmony with their sur- 
roundings and are seen thus in their rightful setting, enhanced 
by the work of a potter who, separated from the ancient crafts- 
men by the passing of centuries, is yet linked with them in a 
community of ideas. 

Further, throughout the house, there are tiled fireplaces of 
unusual construction, ornamented by rare marbles which blend 
or contrast happily with each separate colour-scheme. One 
mantelpiece and sides show the grey pink of the copper lustres ; 
one is all blue with a delicate atmospheric effect ; another is 
planned with ships in red lustre alternating with a decoration 
which represents a shimmering red bough ; yet another exhibits 
raised flowers in orange, shading to a translucent pink. Again, 
where appropriate, in the bathrooms and the neighbourhood of 
the nurseries, some of the walls are tiled solely with the grotesque 
birds and animals in the invention of which De Morgan was a 
past-master and which for all time are unique — for while the 



to <u 















o ^. a> 
^S o 



O ft 

"^ g 



O 3 



THE FULHAM PERIOD 229 

future may produce imitators of De Morgan ware in colour and 
process, no brain will ever emulate the peculiarly individual 
character of his rare and delicate humour. 

Thus Phcenix-like out of the dead factory rose this structure 
commemorative of its existence and encircled by a lovely garden 
where loggias, pavilions and fountain-tanks again reflect in the 
pale English sunshine the glowing richness of the blfte-and-green 
oriental colour-scheme. And so it is in life, that out of what 
seems failure often arises a permanent and unforeseen result ; for 
this house which, like some Aladdin's palace, has sprung up amid 
incongruous surroundings, stands to-day a monument to the 
creative power of two men— the architect who designed it and 
the potter whose best life-work it preserves and enshrines for 
posterity. 

' I have had no orders for Tuileries Palaces yet,' wrote 
Ricardo to De Morgan, sending him the Journal of Architecture, 
in which illustrations of the house were reproduced ; and De 

Morgan replied : — 

' Florence, 

' March 21st, 1907. 

' It's really a pleasure to write to you with no damn business in it ! 
This time only thanks for the shiny-paged journal, with the really won 
derful pictures of THE HOUSE in it. It is a beautiful palace — there's 
no doubt of it. 

' But Millionaires aren't half millionaires not to say at once " Let's 
build a city that-\\dse, forthwith ! " Not a mere house but a town of 
houses — and plant all the gardens forthwith, straight-away, to be ready 
when the houses are finishing fifty years hance. 

' I don't much care for the figure a-top of the dome — seems to me to 
want impersonality — is that intelligible, or otherwise ? 

' I hope you overstated the non-existence of orders for new houses — 
of course over-statement is cut off at a limit in this case. Well 1 I hope 
what you said was short of the limit. 

' Them's my ideas about the house.' 

Nevertheless, to the artist, happiness lies not in fruition but 
in endeavour ; and so to De Morgan the enforced cessation of 
his work remained fraught with an indescribable bitterness. 
' All my life I have been trying to make beautiful things, and 
now that I can make them nobody wants them ! ' he said once 
in a mood of dire despondency ; ' Only my own extinction can 
make them valuable ! ' Yet this, the saddest cry of Art crippled 
by commercial considerations, is a lament as old as civilization 
itself. Of all those lovers of beauty who to-day would give fancy 
prices for De Morgan ware, there was not one to come forward 
to enable the creator to create while life still inspired the glowing 
fancy and ingenious brain. But Man's primitive custom of 
deif3/ing the dead still survives ; and only when Death, by 
putting a period to production, has at last set a mercantile value 
upon a work of art, does it obtain due recognition from an appre- 
ciative public. 



CHAPTER X 

JOSEPH VANCE 

I 905-1 906 

WITH the cessation of the work which had been the main- 
spring of so many years, Life had lost its savour for De 
Morgan, and only the belief sustained him that the dead factory 
would some day be revivified into a successful existence. ' That 
is the hope I live in,' he wrote. 

To add to the sadness of this time, two of his oldest friends 
had passed from him. In 1896 William Morris had ended his 
brilliant career after a period of protracted suffering, during 
which Mary De Morgan had been among those who ministered 
to his darkened hours. And dying thus slowly, when scarcely 
past the fulness of a splendid manhood, the poet-artist had 
breathed a gallant farewell to existence — ' I have had a beautiful 
life, and I'm glad of it.' But to De Morgan it seemed impossible 
to believe that that companion of so many years — that vivid 
personality with the spacious genius and the fiery energy — had 
drifted into the great Silence, Two years later Burne-Jones, 
still working with undiminished power upon one of his finest 
conceptions, had been snatched away abruptly in mortal agony. 
And when De Morgan saw his wonderful ' Avalon,' there were 
still upon it the chalk marks indicating the work which the dead 
painter had intended to do on that morrow which never came. 

Later, out in Florence, the Biography of William Morris 
stirred in De Morgan many memories, and filled him with 
admiration for the matter and the manner of it. 

William De Morgan to J. W. Mackail. 

' Chelsea, 

' May 24^/j, '99. 

' I must unburden my mind of an accumulation of suppressed praise 
of the Biography. It goes on growing and growing as I read. And now 
I have read all but all of it — and much two or three times over — and I 
have a right to say how well done I think it. 

' For indeed you have done well, and that's the sacred truth. And 
you have done well where there was so much room for failure — such 
a-many opportunities for doing it ill ! 

' How I pity you tlirough all the months of responsibility — it must 



JOSEPH VANCE 231 

have been fearful ! — and how I congratulate you upon having got through 
it so well — if there is a hitch or a fault anywhere, / have not found it out. 

' What has delighted me particularly has been the way you have 
written in detail about his poetry. It was difficult (wasn't it ?) to do it 
justice without seeming to overflow into blind praise. Anyhow I shall 
always say of you what is reported to have been said by a Scotch gentle- 
man, " He's a vara sensible raon — he agrees wi' maist of my opeenions." 
Please think me a vara sensible mon on the same grounds, at any rate as 
far SIS Morris's poetry goes. 

' I shall read that book very often, I know, and always thank you for 
it. Evelyn endorses me all round.' 

A few years later news came to De Morgan of the passing of 
another of the giant intellects of his generation — George Fred- 
erick Watts, R.A., the kindly ' Signor ' of many happy recollec- 
tions. During the last years of active life, while Watts was still 
working at his great statue of Physical Energy, it had been an 
arresting sight to see the spare, ethereal figure of the sculptor 
beside his powerful creation, the strong brain still dominating 
the weak body — frail old Age creating immortal Youth. ' My 
gratitude is great indeed to Signor,' De Morgan wrote to Mrs. 
Watts, ' both for his Art and its teaching. All will lay stress on 
the latter who suspect, as I do, that the death of a man is the 
birth of a soul — I suppose we shall know all about it before very 
long — all of us ! ' 

That same year, 1904, came out the Memorials of Edward 
Burne- Jones, written by his wife ; and again De Morgan, living in 
the Past, wrote to Mackail : ' Do you know it is a long, long time 
since anything has given me such unmixed pleasure as the Life 
—certainly nothing in the same line since yours of Morris — what 
I feel and hear said by others is that the beauty of the workman- 
ship will attract and engross those who never realized anything 
of its subject at all during his life — in fact, that it will bring in 
outsiders. What very short ways there are of saying things — 
if one could only pitch on them at the first go off ! Anyhow, the 
book is a delightful book, and that not only for me because of 
my old memories, but for what a thoughtful man of my acquain- 
tance calls " our contemporaries of the Future." I shall write an 
effusion to the author when I've done the 2nd vol. — if ever my 
present wife lets me have it to finish.' 

In answer to appreciative letters from both husband and 
wife Lady Burne-Jones wrote with the charm which charac- 
terized her correspondence : — 

Lady Burne-Jones to Mrs. De Morgan. ' 

' Jan. igih, 1905. 
' My dear Evelyn, — 

' How Idnd of you to write me the warm-hearted note that came 
this morning ! I do value the sympathy of my friends so very much and 
am comforted by it beyond words. Thank you, my dear, for what you 



232 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

say. So many have told me that they hear the voice again and find 
passed days brought back by the Memorials — wliich is what I wanted — 
and the evident interest and importance of tlie men and the time dealt 
wiLh, to strangers, has been beyond my expectation. 

' Have you seen Arthur Hughes's illustrations to a child's book called 
Babies' Classics ? it is very l""';iv j:^ shows him to be no day older than 
when he did Sing-song, bless him ! Ah, my dear, it is not fairy gold 
that we have been laying up, the reality of those treasures never fails for 
a minute. 

' Yes, I hope in course of time, Mr. Rooke will give us a book of con- 
versations and recollections. I have often compared him to Eckermann 
in my mind. 

' We had a good Christmas, all the children and grand-children were 
here, and the name we love was often spoken. 

' Sometimes I dream of coming out to Florence and going on to 
Venice — I wonder if it will ever come true ! ' 

Lady Burne-Jones to William De Morgan. 

' ROTTINGDEAN, SuSSEX, 

' Feb. 15th, 1905. 
' My dear William, — 

' Having answered other letters of less intimate friends — j'^ou under- 
stand that ! — -I turn gladly to your patiently waiting pages. 

' The words you picked out to say about the Memorials could not be 
matched for their comfort, and that you and other friends whose knowledge 
and judgment I value have said the same thing, is my daily help and 
strength. I reahze now the dillioulty and danger of my attempt as I 
did not beforehand — how could I ? The profound interest of the thing 
swallowed up all fear. I am greatly pleased by the eagerness and serious- 
ness with which the story has been received by the papers as a rule ; I 
feel as if the publication had been timely which is so important a thing, 
and that the lives and work of those wonderful men have already begun 
to work like leaven. 

' How glad I am of what you say about the talks with Dr. Evans ; * 
they give me great joy, and I recognize their truth, though of course 
Edward never talked to me in that particular way. 

' Crom Price, too, hailed them as reminding kim of the fiery Oxford 
days. Yes, " Sebastian " was a great gift in those later years. You 
would like him much. He has been to see me two or three times down 
here, and will come again I hope before the Summer, for I value his friend- 
ship, deeply. 

' You may trust in your version of Rossetti's Crom poem • being the 
wrong one, whoever gave it you. I had mine from Ned, and often heard 
it chanted by him. I ask you as a friend how a " dead dog " can " trickle " 
from Crom's or any other pocket — and then I leave the subject with you.' 

Meanwhile De Morgan, bereft of what had been the aim and 
occupation of so many years, pondered vaguely how to fill the 

* The remarkable conversation on life and consciousness which Edward 
Burne-Jones held with Dr. Sebastian Evans. See Memorials of Edward 
Dnme-Jones, Vol. H, pp. 251-257. 

* A Limerick composed by Rossetti as follows : — • 

There was a young doctor named Crom 

W^om you'll get very little good from. 

If liis pockets j'-ou jog. 

The inside of a dog 

Is certain to trickle from Orom. 




Saint Christina Giving h 
Painted by Evelyn De Morgan in Italy, in 1904, and brought over froi 
purchased by Mrs. Stirling. 




.'. er's Jewels to the Poor 

n just before the Great War. Sold for the benefit of the blinded soldiers, and 



JOSEPH VANCE 233 

empty days, and thought of writing a History of Pottery. Then, 
in the guise of an incident of small importance, came the event 
which was to change the current of his life. 

Some time before, in 1901, during a spare hour, he had written 
two chapters of a novel, * just to see what I could do,' he ex- 
plained subsequently ; ' I alwa5's loved grubby little boys, and 
I thought I should like to write a story of a grubby little 
boy. I began and got interested in him. But when I read over 
what I had written, I was so little impressed with the result that 
I nearly burnt it ; in any case I put it away in a drawer and 
forgot all about it. Later in the year, when we were going out 
to Florence, it accidentally came with us among a great mass of 
business papers.' Turning out these papers some time after- 
wards, he tossed the despised manuscript with a heap of rubbish 
into the waste-paper basket, where by chance his wife saw it, 
and glanced casually at it before consigning it to the flames. 
The story, with its graphic, sordid realism, at once gripped her 
attention ; she set it carefully aside and awaited her opportunity. 

Shortly afterwards De Morgan was ill in bed, suffering osten- 
sibly from influenza, but principally from the unwonted idleness 
which filled him with depression and sapped his vitality. Evelyn 
took the piece of manuscript to him and laid it by his bedside, 
with a pencil temptingly adjacent. ' I think something might 
be made of this,' she said briefly. When she looked in softly 
half an hour later he had started on the occupation which he 
was never again to abandon, and was writing rapidly. 

By and by she discovered that, somewhat characteristically, 
wheji she provided him with the pencil, she had omitted to supply 
any paper. As a result he had written the continuation of 
Joseph Vance in the washing-book vv^hich happened to be handy, 
and when that was full, unable to arrest the rapidity of his flying 
pen, he had covered the backs of advertisements, torn envelopes, 
and scraps of paper which were within his reach with the con- 
tinuation of the story, so that afterwards it was with difficulty 
that she pieced the disjointed fragments together into a con- 
secutive whole. 

At first he did not treat his new occupation seriously. ' My 
book,' he explained later, ' was written in the serenest indepen- 
dence an author can enjoy, to wit, a total disbelief in ultimate 
publication. I never considered the feelings of my reader for a 
moment — nor his eyesight ! ' He told his story in the leisurely, 
discursive, colloquial fashion in which he transcribed letters to 
a friend. He wrote as he saw, as he felt, as he knew — unham- 
pered by the fear of little gods or Great Men — press, publishers 
or public ; and thus, as ideas begotten of the heterogeneous 
experience of years poured from his brain, moulded into fiction, 
the keynote of his work was a great sincerity. 



234 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

* The original idea of this novel as it first came to me,' he 
explained subsequently, ' was a story supposed to be told to 
me by an old man dying in the workhouse. It was the history 
of his own life, and on its bare material side was that of Joseph 
Vance. There was, however, no sentiment in it of any kind ; 
no humour, no brightness anywhere. My imaginary old man 
was, naturally enough, fearfully depressed and melancholy, and 
his narrative, or rather what seemed to me, his facts as they 
stood, were too unutterably sad for any picturesque form of 
reproduction. But gradually the story took the bit into its teeth 
and twisted into what I never intended. I found the task a very 
pleasant one ; and when Lossie came into it, I began to get 
deeply interested.' 

As it stands to-day, the tale is almost too well known to need 
recapitulation. Presented in the form of an autobiography, 
Joseph Vance, the fictitious writer, holds the chief place through- 
out. His father, Christopher Vance, was a workman, given to 
drink. In consequence of this failing, he lost his job ; and while 
ruffled in temper at this untoward result, he became involved in 
a public-house brawl with a sweep, Peter Gunn, who fought with 
a genius peculiar to himself, by butting his opponent with his 
cranium, a weapon as deadly as it was adamantine. Christopher, 
considerably damaged by this treatment, was removed to the 
hospital ; while his small son, from a safe place of concealment, 
avenged his father's wTongs by successfully shying a broken 
bottle at the sweep, whom he thus triumphantly blinded in one 
eye. 

When Christopher returned to the world, temporarily chas- 
tened in mind and body, he, by mere chance, purchased from 
a pedlar a board which bore the legend : ' C. Dance, BtiUder. 
Repairs, Drains promptly attended to.' A little manipulating 
altered the ' D ' into a ' V,' and the announcement thus bearing 
his own name, he placed it above his door. As though there had 
been magic in it, all the neighbourhood became convinced that 
it had been there for years ; and custom came to its owner. 
Vance got rich, owing primarily to his astute understanding of 
human nature, and his grand, unalterable principle of ' never 
doing anything with his own hands.' By and by he had Works 
of his own, and moved into a larger house ; but he remained true 
to his type and to his original character, even to the end when, in 
consequence of one of his periodical lapses into drunken habits, he 
burnt down his premises, and having omitted to pay up his 
insurance, would have fallen once more into poverty, but for his 
foresight in having provided his second wife with a valuable 
diamond ' Tiarrhoea ' which the creditors could not touch. 
Vance is an extraordinarily clever presentment of the British 
workman of a former generation, with his grit, his shrewdness. 



JOSEPH VANCE 235 

his endearing good-heartedness, and his vigorous common sense, 
so that he remains dehghtful to the last despite his blatant vul- 
garity of speech and his palpable failings. The portraits of his 
two wives — particularly the second, Miss Seraphina Dowdswell, 
more commonly called Pheener, are equally and humorously true 
to class, and unalterably consistent. 

Throughout the waxing and the waning of Christopher's for- 
tunes, his son Joseph is seen, first as a delightful child with a 
passion for mathematics which procures him a nomination for a 
good school from his father's earliest employer, Dr. Thorpe ; 
then at Oxford ; then in London, where he becomes a partner in 
an engineering business. And meantime the sustained interest 
in his career lies not in any dramatic incident, which would mar 
the realism, but in the gradual development of his character and 
the unv/avering charm of his personality ; in his association with 
his friends and particularly in his attitude towards the two 
women who prominently affect his life. The first of these, 
Lossie Thorpe, is an exquisitely drawn figure, who, to the small 
Joseph in his boyhood, is a species of divinity. When in the 
dawn of a lovely womanhood, she marries an Indian soldier, poor 
Joe discovers that he has all along been deeply in love with her, 
and she remains the lodestar of his saddened days. ' There was 
no real Lossie ! ' De Morgan said afterwards when questioned as 
to her origin ; ' but she came to me in the book as though she 
belonged there. She really seemed to step out into my literary 
life, just as the girl in the story did into Joseph Vance's.' Yet 
the second woman, Janey, who becomes Joe's wife when the 
early glamour of this boyish romance has faded into a pained 
remembrance, is the more subtly drawn character of the two. 
From her first appearance, when she drifts into Joe's life and 
heart so quietly that he scarcely recognizes her influence, till the 
last all-too-tragic moment when they were both battling in the 
sea after a shipwreck and she drifts away from him for ever, she 
is one of the most remarkable pieces of characterization in the 
book. 

In the latter part of the story, Joe, all alone in the world, 
takes upon himself the blame of another man's crime, the dis- 
tasteful decadent Beppino, an unworthy son of a delightful 
father. Dr. Thorpe ; and in order to spare Lossie the knowledge 
of her brother's true nature, he is content to live under a cloud 
during a long exile in South America. The last chapters are full 
of the poignant tragedy of advancing age and profound loneli- 
ness ; nevertheless, it ends happily, on the note of the romance 
which has been sustained throughout. 

Such is the bald outline of the story, without the light and 
shade, or the manifold subtleties which made of it a human 
document. In 1904 De Morgan wrote facetiously to Mackail 



236 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

' I am Rearing the end of Joe — he tells lies, but the supreme skill 
of the author justifies them ! ' By and by he sent a portion of 
the voluminous manuscript to a friend in London, Mrs. Dowson 
(now Mrs. Hugh Woolner), who had started a type- writing office. 
' After Manuscripture comes the type,' he wrote, ' and one has 
to be careful of the type— like Nature— or what she ought to 
have been. In fact, I expect my brain will be softening with 
revision later. I shall hope, however, for " Good news from 
Ghent " to soothe the head Aix I shall be suffering from. I can't 
help thinking this is a pun ! ' 

One result of the typing provided encouragement. The girl 
to whom it was entrusted by Mrs. Dowson was discovered dis- 
solved in tears, and on being questioned respecting the cause of 
her grief, she admitted that her feelings had been so powerfully 
worked upon by Janey's death in the story, that she could not 
get on with her work. Later, De Morgan, sending the rest of 
the MS., wrote genially : ' You will be sorry to hear of the death 
of Dr. Thorpe. But don't let anyone fret — he died quite pain- 
lessly — I killed him in a minute ! ' 

At length there came out to Florence the first criticism of 
the novel from Lady Burne- Jones : — 

' I am delighted that you have written us a Tale, and long to see it in 
book shape. I read some inspiriting pages of it at Margaret's, and liked 
it very much in spite of its being in the dead letter of " typing," and what 
is more, it impressed me as the beginning of a series of life-giving stories. 
I'm sure if you only lay the reins on the neck of your pen it will carry you 
swiftly over enchanted ground and be for the happiness of us and those 
who come after us. Do go on now with it as the business of your life. 
What a nice stock-in-trade is an inkpot and pen and paper.' 

Still De Morgan had no thought of publishing his work, but 
his wife wrote privately to Mr. Shaw-Sparrow, ' My husband has 
committed a crime — in other words he has written a novel. The 
book is, to my thinking, remarkably successful ' . . . and in 
extenuation of her possible partiality she explained, ' Our friend 
Mr. Mackail, who has read the first half, pronounced it a mixture 
of Dickens and du Maurier, with an individual style of its own, 
so, perhaps, after all, my judgment may not be far out.' Later, 
De Morgan supplemented this letter in obvious surprise at his 
own temerity : — 

' Jan. 2gth, 1905. 

' ily wife tells me you will kindly take charge of tliis little story of 
mine — it is rather longer than Vanity Fair ! at present ! 

' It has been the main employment of a year that I have scarcely been 
able to use otherwise owing to abominable neuritis in the hand ; at any 
rate this scribbling keeps me quiet and prevents my being sulky — whether 
others than my personal friends who have read it will be amused by it 
remains to be seen. I am curious to see the result of the experiment. 

' Tlu-ee huge parcels of type-written stuff go oil to you to-day — the 
bulk is appalling ! ' 



JOSEPH VANCE 237 

About this time Bernard Shaw's play ' You never can tell ' 
was running. To this De Morgan went, and after the perform- 
ance he observed with an air of amusement : ' Really — " You 
never can tell " — perhaps some day I shall blossom into a fully- 
fledged author ! ' This vision, however, was quickly dispelled. 
Messrs. Hodder & Stoughton, to whom the manuscript had been 
sent, promptly returned it with a rejection couched in sufficiently 
scathing terms. The length of the MS., it was pointed out, made 
publication impossible to contemplate, but even if reduced to 
half its then length, the work was unlikely to be otherwise than 
a failure. Mr. Shaw-Sparrow also wrote to De Morgan to ex- 
plain more fully the grounds of rejection; and in view of after 
events, the letter is amusing : — 

' The first three or four chapters caused the " reader " to believe that 
the book was a find, and he still thinks that Mr. De Morgan will liit the 
mark throughout a humorous. Barry-Paine-like book, having a story. 
The humorous books now passing out of vogue have no story. Messrs. 
H. & S. would welcome a love-story written with humour. The present 
book, they tell me, is much too long, and too much in the round-about 
style fashionable in Thackeray's time.' 

De Morgan accepted the verdict as final, and unable to turn 
Joseph Vance into a ' humorous Barry-Paine-like book,' he put 
the condemned manuscript av/ay out of sight. Nevertheless, 
bitten with the fascination of writing, he was already hard at 
work on another story. ... 'I was half-way through Alice-for- 
Short,' he wrote later, ' while Joe still lay in a drawer awaiting 
his Heinemann ! ' In June, 1905, however, we find him re- 
marking : ' I don't want to begin a third novel before I have got 
some idea what will become of it. I am getting on with my 
second rapidly ! ' In the interim, a visitor to Florence inserted 
in a diary : — 

' I went to call on the De Morgans ; both are working from dawn to 
dark — he \vriting, she painting glorious pictures. The novels don't get 
published, and the pictures don't get exhibited ; but both author and 
artist seem supremely happy ! ' 

Meanwhile Mrs. Dowson had unearthed a copy of Joseph 
Vance from its temporary tomb, and had sent it to Mr. Lawrence, 
of the firm of Messrs. Lawrence & Bullen. But as the subse- 
quent silence lengthened, De Morgan wrote resignedly : ' It may 
be they are delaying a positive negative on the chance of its 
changing to a hesitating positive ! It seems to me that it is 
quite possible that a publisher may often hesitate from courtesy 
to say, " Do take your beastly MS. away and don't bother me to 
read it," when all the while he would command the author's 
esteem and sympathy by a Johnsonian expression of opinion. 
Or in this case he may be hesitating to say he will think about it 
if it is cut down to 25,000 words. I believe it is 250,000 ! ' 



238 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

The date for the annual migration to London arrived while 
the fate of Joe still hung in the balance. De Morgan, as usual, 
travelled by sea, and throughout the voyage he sat on deck 
playing chess, at which he was an adept, with a fellow-passenger, 
a Chinaman, whom he had discovered to be as insatiable a de- 
votee of the game as himself. The Chinaman could not speak 
a word of English, and De Morgan could not speak a word of 
Chinese, so at the close of each game the two antagonists rose, 
bowed solemnly to each other, and then in silence resumed their 
pastime. 

In England the usual fate of absentees awaited De Morgan 
and his wife — an immediate necessity for procuring servants and 
a difficulty in securing even the most inefficient. Art and Litera- 
ture alike had to be cast aside before the pressing need of the 
moment. * I have been longing to ask you to talk about things,' 
De Morgan wrote to Mrs. Dowson, ' but our Household has 
bolted, or drinks ; and this blessed day I have been making the 
beds and answering the bell, and emptying the slops — Lord have 
mercy upon us miserable sinners ! ' On July 4, 1905, Evelyn 
wrote tragically to Mrs. Holiday : — 

' We have been back a weary month, nothing but drunken cooks 
tumbhng about Uke ninepins, no studies, no work, no peace, stodgy 
British incapacity at every turn, soaked in beer. 

' We have reached a sort of demi-semi haven in the shape of a very 
stout lady who eats till her eyes start out of her head, and rolls sleepily 
about the house, yet it is bliss compared to the beery ones of the past 
few weeks ; but the standard is lowered and we are very humble indeed 
now, and grateful for such very small mercies. 

' We must have a good long talk soon. Have you read that story of 
the doctor who tells how he all but died, got nearly quite free of his body, 
and went out into the street ? ' 

But even the ' demi-semi haven ' soon surpassed the example 
of her predecessors ; and drastic measures became necessary to 
ensure domestic peace. Evelyn having observed that the de- 
linquent always got tipsy if she went out for a holiday but 
remained sober so long as she stayed indoors, attempted a cure 
by keeping her in the house till she showed signs of permanent 
amendment. During the time of probation her conduct was so 
satisfactory that at last permission could no longer be withheld 
for her to go out, though a solemn promise was first demanded 
from her that she would not touch any drink. Vows of total 
abstinence having been thus extracted, the stout lady departed ; 
but alas ! at the time appointed for her return, she did not re- 
appear, and Evelyn having sat up waiting anxiously till a late 
hour, at length beheld her approaching in the condition antici- 
pated. The culprit tottered into the hall, and subsiding into the 
nearest chair, rolled a beery eye on Evelyn and murmured 
dramatically, ' It'sh not drink — it'sh i£)orry ! ' 



JOSEPH VANCE 239 

The following day Evelyn had a visit from Lady Bume- Jones, 
to whom she related the episode ; and Lady Bume- Jones, in 
order that she might remember to hand it on to her family in its 
pristine funniness, made a note of it on her visiting-card. On 
her way home, however, she went on to the Army and Navy 
Stores, and in the hubbub of a crowded department failed to 
make the attendant hear her name and address. She therefore 
handed her visiting-card to him, and was surprised to see him 
suddenly turn crimson and dive abruptly behind the counter, till, 
glancing at the card she had laid before him, she saw — 



Lady Burne-Jones 
It'sh not drinfi — it'sh worry. 



In the midst of these prosaic afflictions, on July 5, 1905, De 
Morgan, to his astonishment, received the following letter : — 

W. Lawrence to William De Morgan. 

' Dear Sir, — 

' I have very nearly finished Joe Vance. The book is too long, 
and yet I wish it were twice the length. 

' If I had plenty of money I would publish it without hesitation, so 
pray do not let it ever be said that the book passed through my hands 
and I refused it. 

' It must be published by one of the great firms who can afford to 
advertise it properly for its understanding. After the Marie Corellis and 
Hall Caines it is like a breath of pure sea air. Whether the public are so 
soaked with bad English and melodramatic twaddle that they will refuse 
Joe, I cannot say, but if they don't fall in love with the Doctor and Lossie 
and forgive Joe for all liis faults they must be either fools or knaves, or 
both. I should very much like to have a talk with you about the whole 
matter. . . .' 

That same day De Morgan replied in some amazement : ' I 
cannot tell you how pleased I am at the receipt of your letter — 
only — am I awake or dreaming ? — that seems to me the first 
point to settle. . . . However, awake or asleep, thank you 
cordially for your appreciation, and thank you still more for your 
more than appreciation — if, as misgiving tells me, that is how to 
describe it. . , . However, if I don't wake up and find a letter 
saying " please send for your slow and unnatural MS.," I shall 
try to keep asleep till after I have seen you, for the pleasure of 
the visit ! ' 

The following day Lawrence wrote : — 

' I finished Joe last night and then began to read him again. I don't 
want to raise your spirits too much so I may tell you that, in the main, I 
have been uniformly unsuccessful in the novels I have liked well. Your 



240 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

book appeals to me more than any I have ever read in MS. — ergo it will 
be most unsuccessful. 

' My opinion is of no value whatever — save in its honesty.' 

' I shall not allow myself to be depressed by the circumstance 
you mention,' replied De Morgan, who seemed to regard his 
present venture much in the same light as his former scientific 
experiments ; ' chiefly I am curious to see what Joe will do if 
he is put in the water to swim for himself ! I shall be greatly 
delighted if he reversed your experience — anyhow shall hope we 
may talk out a way of putting it to the test.' 

The upshot of the interview which followed was that Mr. 
Lawrence carried off the manuscript and, as he aftenvards 
described, staggered with his heavy load into Mr. Heinemann's 
office, where he deposited it in front of the publisher — a sohd 
block of thin type-written sheets which stood about a foot and 
a half in height. Thereupon the following terse conversation 
took place. 

Mr. Lawrence (firmly). * Here is what seems to me a most 
remarkable book. You have got to read it ! ' 

Mr. Heinemann (aghast). ' That I'll be d if I do ! ' 

Nevertheless the manuscript was read and recognized as a 
masterpiece ; and ere long Mr, Heinemann himself was on his 
way across the Atlantic with early proofs. The publication of 
Joe in England and America was decided upon ; and when the 
date once more came round for De Morgan's return to Florence, 
he wrote to his first critic, Lady Burne- Jones, full of amusement 
at the novelty of the situation in which he found himself. 

William De Morga?i to Lady Burne-Jones. 

' 26 Oct., 1905. 
' Dear Georgie, — 

' We are ofE on Wednesday — which is the same as Tuesday, all but. 
Sunday afternoon we have to stay at home to show pictures to some 
friends while they talk to one another on current topics. 

' We shall be horribly sorry to miss seeing you if it must be so. But 
we shall try to prevent it by seizing whatever chance offers. ... It must 
be that way, for you may fancy how pushed we are at the last. 

' Matters are complicated by the fact that our Household is to marry 
a sculptor on the morning we depart ! I Consider the fiancees of the 
field that cook not, neither do they lay the cloth. 

' Yes, Joe is being set up in America and his author is ditto ditto in 
London — seeing what a good opinion his Publisher's autumn announce- 
ments have of him ! — He means to be immortal as long as he can — then 
will come the book. . . . 

' So Mrs. Beatty » is gone — one more Chelsea memory — we are getting 
fewer — but it's all right, I'm confident. 
' We shall try to occur — always 

' Yours affectly, 

' Wm. De Morgan.' 

* One of the former painters and decorators at the Chelsea factory. 




" The Little Sea-Maid " 
Evelyn De Morgan fecit 

" She had sold her tongue to a witch that she miKht become an Earth-maiden, all for love of an 
Earth-Prince • and when evening came she would steal away from the Prince's castle to cool her 
aching feet in'the sea. But alas ! she was dumb. And when she danced a pain as of cutting kni\es 
was in her feet." — Hans Christian Andfrsen. . . , , 

[The little Sea-maid is seen seated upon a rock upon which is growing velvety-green sea-weed ; 
beside her is a piece of lovelv crimson drapery. In tlie distance the Prince's Castle shows in purple 
relief against a clear lemon-a'nd-rose tinted sky, while a ri.sing moon is shedding a silver light on tlie 
I'lue water.] 



JOSEPH VANCE 241 

Mr. Lawrence had previously urged De Morgan to condense 
the book, and De Morgan, in consequence, removed about 
20,000 to 30,000 words — an excision which, although imperative 
in view of the exigencies of modern publication, is otherwise tc 
be regretted, since the public thereby lost certain dehghtfu] 
scenes and conversations — especially the love-affairs of Vi, 
Lossie's sister, which were erased bodily. To the author's mind, 
these omissions left the story with gaps noticeable where the 
narrative in the original had at first run smoothly and leisurely 
to a conclusion which was inevitable : ' I never cut anything 
out,' De Morgan complained, ' but that I do not afterwards feel 
it has left an hiatus which has destroyed the sequence.' Mean- 
while he went to immense pains to ensure that all his facts were 
correct, and referred to experts on every subject respecting which 
he felt that his knowledge might be at fault. ' I am especially 
anxious about improbabilities,' he wrote ; ' Authors do make 
such frightful blunders ! There ought to be a profession of 
Literary men's blunders censors who could be paid by them at 
so much a blunder detected.' None the less, at the last moment 
he was saved from inaccuracy on a subject of which he admitted 
ignorance. It is said that the proofs were actually in the 
press when Mrs. Mackail hurried round to point out to him a slip 
of the pen which she had overlooked when reading the MS. 
' You have said that the butcher left the dripping at the door ! ' she 
exclaimed breathlessly, ' and you see butchers don't leave drip- 
ping at doors ! ' De Morgan thankfully and hurriedly removed 
the dripping from ' standing in the place where it ought not ! ' 

Throughout this period, however, he was obsessed by the idea 
that when his book was actually published his brief satisfaction 
would be at an end ; in the interval, one of the events to which 
he looked forward with almost childish pleasure was the thought 
of sending out a copy of his first novel to his sister, who was then 
in Egypt. Threatened with phthisis, Mary De Morgan had been 
ordered to live abroad, and had subsequently undertaken a 
strange task which interested her greatly — the charge of a 
Reformatory for children in Cairo. 

' You may fancy [wrote De Morgan to Mrs. Henry Holiday, on 
December 4, from Florence] my disgust at not having Joseph by 
Xmas day to send out to my sister Mary, in Egypt — (Divunity was always 
my line !) But don't do more about him till you receive your presentation 
copy from the author, who is very much interested that you should read 
him {Joe) to see if you sympathize with a strong impression the Waldstein 
sonata produced upon him. No doubt Joe was wrong, as he was quite 
ignorant of music. But his author would like to know how it strikes a 
contemporary. 

' He is afraid an immortality founded on his publisher's too flattering 
opinion may be cut off in its prime by the appearance of the vol. itself. 
Meanwhile he is enjoying it, and strutting about like any peacock ! 

Q 



242 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

' I wish we could be in London to see the Show.* Few men can show 
such a forty years' work (I can speak to the forty and more, personally) — 
as H. H. 

' It was a curious pleasantry of Fate to name him Holiday — but I 
interpret it as an insinuation on Fate's part that a successful day's work 
is the best of Holidays, and the best of Holidays's is a very successful day's 
work indeed ! — I agree with F. 

' . . . I admire Miss Brickdale's work immensely, with a faint sense of 
a Shakespearian clown somewhere. It is a pleasure to tliink that such 
good work is so successful. Evelyn is busy to a degree — loo centigrade, 
circa. 

' Love to the other angle of your triangle and yourself, from both of 
lis.' 

Nearly two months later, De Morgan, feverishly correcting 
the proofs of Joseph Vance, snatched time to write his congratu- 
lations to Mr. Mackail on seeing the announcement in the Spec- 
tator that the latter had been appointed Professor of Poetry in 
the University of Oxford. ' Mary, as 3^ou know,' he adds, ' is 
in Egypt. Accounts of her read well and are, I hope, authentic. 
Probably she will be back before I can send Joseph out to her — 
as he takes so long in publishing. Why, here have I actually 
completed two more stories and the proofs of Joe only half cor- 
rected ! I discovered frightful blunders in him — but there ! 
what does it matter ? As far as I can make out, modern Fiction 
consists almost entirely of solecisms ! ' In the following letter 
from his wife, however, there is no mention of the event which 
was impending : — 

Evelyn De Morgan to Professor Mackail. 

' 22nd Feb., 1906. 
' Dear Jack, — 

' I must add a line to send my own individual Congrats. We were 
50 delighted when we read the news in the Spectator yesterday — a belated 
Spectator that reaches us after the fact, so to speak, but is nevertheless 
Dur only newspaper from England. This sounds very Italian and unpatrio- 
tic, but we are both getting very cosmopolitan I fear, and have a general 
tendency to look upon a two days' old English paper as perfect for uTapping- 
ap purposes but otherwise tedious and bulky, and we go in for Italian 
papers because they are slight and flimsy as to news, and one need not 
read them ; and then we discover a real piece of good news like this and 
realize that we are savages in the backwoods, or we should have known 
ill about it. 

' When are you coming out to Florence again ? I am sure Angela * 
iiust be wanting another necklace. Only give us time, that is all we ask, 
ind we will provide you with any abomination in the way of weather you 
lave a fancy for, " From Greenland's icy Mountains," etc. 

' Love to Margaret, 
' Yours ever, 

' Evelyn De Morgan.' 

* Mr. Henry Holiday was having an exhibition of his pictures. 
■ The recipient's daughter. 



JOSEPH VANCE 243 

It was while the publication of Joseph Vance still tarried, and 
while the first advertisements of his advent were appearing, that 
one morning De Morgan was electrified to discover his fictitious 
hero had taken an unexpectedly concrete form. 

{Louis) Joseph Vance to William De Morgan. 

' Good Ground, Long Island, N.Y., U.S.A., 

' June 18th, 1906. 
* Dear Mn. De Morgan, — 

' I am sure you will appreciate how uncommon are apt to be the 
sensations of one who wakes up to find liimself famous ; especially when 
that one has been striving ever so earnestly to make himself famous by 
writing, rather than by being written about. 

' My London publisher Mr. Grant Richards, in a letter of recent date, 
enclosed me a clipping from an English publication, to the effect that : 

' " Joseph Vance " is the title of a novel by Mr. William De Morgan, 
which Mr. Heinemann is publishing. It is said to be a " complete human 
document." ' 

' Naturally I want to know about it. Wouldn't you .^ It is a curious 
fact, and one that may interest you, that, from the beginning of tlie 
history of the Vance family in America, there has always been a Joseph 
Vance, the son of Wilson Vance. My i^randfather was a Joseph, my father 
a Wilson, my son a Wilson, and his son will be a Joseph if ! 

' Furthermore, aside from tins worthless representative, who writes 
stories of mystery and adventure for a living, there are to my knowledge 
two other Joseph Vances extant on this side of the water. One, Lee 
Joseph, fiourisheth like a green bay -tree, editing a trade journal in the 
city of New York (my winter home) ; and the other, plain Joseph, is (I 
believe) a prosperous farmer in north western Ohio (whence comes my 
father's family). 

' So you see there are more than one who will be uncommonly inter- 
ested in your Joseph Vance. 

' And right here and now (in our American idiom) I want to say that 
in view of the fact that you've made so free with our name, I think you 
should try to balance matters by sending me a copy of the book — for 
the success of which I beg you to accept my best wishes. 

' I'd like to know how it feels to be a " human document " — especially 
a " complete " one. 

* Believe me, 

' I am, faithfully yours, 
' (Louis) Joseph Vance.' 

De Morgan's first surprised answer to the materialization of 
his hero has not survived ; but shortly afterwards we find him 
addressing the latter as follows : — 

' I can't tell you how funny it seems to me to be writing to 
a real live " Joseph Vance " after 200,000 words of writing about 
a fictitious one ! 

' Very many thanks for your letter ! I really believe the 
" human document " is on the point of publication, or the 
Spectator wouldn't say so. I hope it's all true ! but sometimes 
I really doubt it, A party who, after a lifetime spent on Pottery, 
suddenly takes to pottering, may well think he is dreaming when 
he sees his book announced just under the most widely circulated 



244 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

book of the moment. For Heinemann's advt. shows my book 
just under The Jungle. And even inventing mills and sieves 
and bicycles * doesn't warrant a belief that the inventor can 
write fiction. 

' I am writing to Heinemann to send you a copy as soon as 
he is qualified to do so. I hope to receive one myself now at 
any moment. 

' But how strange that the name should chance on two title- 
pages simultaneously in such a totally undesigned manner ! 
The complete disconnexion of one with the other is almost de- 
monstrable. Not quite though — because if I saw a work of yours 
before 1901, the name may easily have remained in my memory 
without my knowing why. The first chapter, written as a ran- 
dom experiment to see what I could do with fiction, was written 
thenabout, and forgotten by me — shoved among some business 
papers — but found by my wife a year later [circa). She insisted 
on my following on, and the 20 pages became 600 ! Now the 
only thing I know of against my having picked your name from 
a book of yours, is that after using it, I had a powerful misgiving 
that in my youth — my early Victorian youth — I had seen a small 
book called Joseph Vance, Cannan. So much so that I asked 
a friend to hunt for it, at Stationers' Hall, etc. But nothing was 
found. If it were to turn up, I should fancy it would be the 
source of my J. V. 

' I hope you will not be displeased with either Joe Vance or 
Christopher his father. The latter certainly comes on the stage 
the worse for liquor, and gets into a fight. But he changes a 
good deal in the course of the story, 

' I suppose the book was called " a complete human docu- 
ment " because the Appendix had not been cut out. I hope 
you will get as far and not think Appendicitis necessary. 

' I am very curious to see your work also. , . , I hope 
every one who reads your book will read mine in consequence and 
vice versa. This will promote healthy circulation. "WTiat the 
Italians call " felicissimi augure " for both of us ! ' 

Mr. Vance had meanwhile introduced himself to De Morgan 
more fully as an Author, forty years younger than the author 
of Joseph Vance ; ' I peddle words for a living,' he explained in 
an amusing letter, ' and write tales of battle, murder and sudden 
death, complicated with mystery, and salted with a modicum 
of " heart interest," to please the public. ... I even compose 

» De Morgan had invented a new duplex gearing for a bicycle, which 
was actuated pneumatically, with two independent gears, for wheels and 
chain. On either side of the handle bar was a rubber bag ; the squeezing 
of one made the wheel cease to be free, of the other changed the gear. 
' I kept the patent alive as long as I could afford it,' he wrote, ' but aiter 
I had spent some ^^300 on it, I allowed it to lapse.' 



JOSEPH VANCE 245 

the rattle-te-bang brand of romance that brings me my bread 
on the type- writer " thinking into the keys," and there you have 
the full measure of my depravity. But I beg your charity. 
I'm a youngster — so there's hope for me ! ' And he adds : — 

' Coincidences multiply ; that the publication of my book should 
tread so close upon the heels of yours in England seems not half so strange 
to me as the fact that, when I dropped into Putnam's book-shop, on 
Twenty-third Street (New York) a few days since, the very first thing 
that met my eyes was a thick red volume, labelled as to its back " Joseph 
Vance — De Morgan — Henry Holt,''' nestling cheek by jowl with a thin 
green book- similarly stamped " The Private War — Louis Joseph Vance — 
Appleto7is ! " I didn't buy the human document because I was counting 
upon your promise to send me a copy. Altogether I find that my biographer 
puts me to the blush, with the wisdom of his years and the variety of 
his achievement. Books, bicycles and Pottery and Sieves and Mills ! 
Goodness I I'm humbled who am only a Lit'ry Feller and have never 
been anything else save a husband and father. The more honour is mine, 
that your book should bear my name ! 

' Thank you for your kind and cordial letter. I'm wishing you all 
sorts of good reviews and heavy sales for /. V ., and I am grateful to 
Mrs. De Morgan for having searched until she found the talent you'd 
buried in the napkin. . . . 

' Do you know (and this is judging mostly from my own experience) 
I've a notion that most of the good books are due to good wives ? ' 

At length the novel Joseph Vance put in a belated appear- 
ance, and one of the first copies was dispatched to Mrs. Maisie 
Dowson with the following inscription : — 

To a lady who was very instrumental in bringing about the 
publication of ' Joseph Vance.' 

M istress Maisie, Mistress Maisie, 
Ami dreaming, drunk or crazy, 
I f it's true that Joseph Vance is 
S afely launched — and circumstances 
I ndicate that such the case is — 
E ndless credit's Mistress Maisie's I 
D ifficulties of tliis distich 
O nly make the writer's fist itch 
With its consciousness of platitude 
S triving to relate his gratitude ; 
O verstatement's none so aisy — 
N ever doubt it, Mistress Maisie 1 

' Verses are not much to swear by,' he added apologetically ; 
' but I can tell you acrostics are not easy literature.' 

At this interesting moment in De Morgan's career, when his 
fate as an author hung in the balance, Mrs. Ady (Julia Cart- 
wright) relates as follows : * In the summer of 1906, I had the 
good fortune to meet him at a country house, where he was 
staying with one of his oldest friends. We had often met be- 
fore, generally at Bume- Jones's house, and as I sat by his side 
at dinner, we recalled those happy times and sighed for the days 



246 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

and the friends that were no more. George Howard, Lord 
CarUsle, who happened to be my other neighbour, joined in our 
conversation, and agreed with all De Morgan said of the brilliant 
play of fantasy, the wit and tenderness, the indefinable charm 
which made our beloved painter the most delightful companion 
in ihe world. And with tears in his eyes De Morgan said how 
it is always thus in life. ' We fail to realize the importance of 
the present and let the good days go by, without any attempt 
to keep a record of our friends' words and actions, until it is 
too late.' 

' Towards the end of dinner he dropped his voice and whis- 
pered that he had a secret to tell me. " The fact is," he said, 
" I have perpetrated the crime or folly — whichever you choose 
to call it — of writing a novel, which has just been published, and 
what is more wonderful I have in my pocket a flattering review 
of the book, in to-day's Spectator! " He went on to tell me how 
the story of Joseph Vance had grown into being ... till the 
actual writing became a pleasure and the book took its present 
shape. The speaker's earnestness and animation, I remember, 
excited Lord Carlisle's curiosity, and after dinner he asked me 
if what he had caught of our conversation could be true and that 
De Morgan had really written a novel. There was no denying 
the fact, and soon we were all reading Joseph Vance and the 
review which had given its author so much satisfaction. 

' From the first, the success of the novel was phenomenal. 
. . . The critics were unanimous in their chorus of praise, in 
spite of the unusual length of the book, which seemed likely 
to prove a stumbling-block . . . and the public on both sides 
of the Atlantic hailed the advent of a new star on the literary 
horizon.' 

No one was more astonished than its author at the imrnediate 
furore with which Joseph Vance was greeted. He had called it 
' An ill- written Autobiography ' - and a critic, in a phrase often 
subsequently quoted, promptly pointed out that ' the " Hi- 
writing " is in truth consummate art.' The SpectaJor, as indi- 
cated, led off with avish eulogy. So far from cavilling at the 
length of the narrative, it dwelt emphatically on the fact that if 
the writers of olden times — ^Dickens, Thackeray and George 
Eliot — could come to life again, they would, in comparison with 
their work, find most of our modem literature ' thin and anae- 
mic ' ; and it added — 

' It is refreshing to find that one stalwart champion of the older school 
survives. Mr. William De Morgan follows, even in its lesser mannerisms, 
the method of Dickens and Thackeray. Slowly and patiently he builds 
up, not an incident or a career, or even tne whole career of one man, or 
woman, but the whole careers of a large circle of friends. He gives a true 
and complete picture of certuri forms of life . . . but we have never 



JOSEPH VANCE 247 

for a moment a doubt about the reality of the sto!-y he tells. . . . The 
book is a remarkable novel — a fine novel by whatever standard we judge 
it . . . every character down to the humblest has the stamp of a genuine 
humanity.' 

The rest of the Press followed in similar vein ; and in Americaj 
even more than in England, the book was welcomed with a pro- 
longed storm of applause. There are, in brief, two tides to 
success, the one to coincide happily with the fashion of the 
moment, to float effectively on the flood of current opinion ; the 
other — but this is given only to the strong — to stem and sur- 
mount it. This last achievement was De Morgan's. ' To a highly 
nervous and irritably impatient reading public,' remarked Professoi 
Lyon Phelps, ' a man whose name had no commercial value in 
literature gravely offered in the year of grace 1906 an " ill- written 
autobiography " of two hundred and eighty thousand words ! 
Well, the result is what might not have been expected. If evei 
a confirmed optimist had reason to feel justification of his faith, 
Mr. De Morgan must have seen it in the reception given to his 
first novel.' And later the keynote of this success is defined : 
' Joseph Vance is not so much a beautifully written or exquisitely 
constructed novel as it is an encyclopaedia of life. We meet real 
people, we hear delightful conversation, and the tremendously 
interesting personality of the author is everywhere apparent 
... It vibrates with the echoes of a long gallery whose walls 
are crowded with pictures.'^ 

Yet the success which the book attained was not at first 
anticipated by Heinemann, whose ardour had been damped by 
the difficulty he had experienced in getting it taken at aU in 
America. Mrs. Drew, the daughter of Mr. Gladstone, read an early 
copy, and wrote to the publisher to say that she considered it 
a remarkable book, but that she hoped in a second edition the 
print would be better, as she could ' recommend no friend ovei 
forty to read it.' ' I am glad you like the novel,' Heinemann 
responded, ' but with regard to the print, it is very unlikely a 
second edition will be called for.' Eighteen months later he sent 
her a volume of Joseph Vance in better type. It was the eighth 
editio7i. ' The entire world,' she wrote before that date, quoting 
from a review, ' seems now divided into Vancers and non- 
Vancers ! ' 

The criticism of his work, however, which had the greatest 
interest for the author came from his personal friends, a few oi 
whose letters may be quoted here, each in its unstudied enthu- 
siasm being typical of its particular writer. One of the first was 
from his erstwhile playmate at Fordhook, Lord Lovelace, whose 

1 Essays on Modern Novelists. William De Morgan. (Macmillan.] 
By William Lyon Phelps, Professor of Enghsh Literature at Yale Univer 
sity, U.S. A. 



248 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

letter likewise bears reference to anothef matter. For while 
Joseph Vance was making his debut, Evdyn De Morgan had been 
persuaded to have an Exhibition of her pictures in Bruton 
Street. There her work had attracted considerable attention, 
and, among other purchasers, Lord Lovelace had bought a 
beautiful little picture illustrative of the Five Mermaids in the 
Fairy Tale by Hans Andersen, a sequel to one she had painted 
previously of the solitary ' Little Seamaid who loved the Prince.' 

The Earl of Lovelace to William De Morgan. 

' July, 1906, 

' OcKHAM Park, 

' Ripley, Surrey, 
' My dear De Morgan, — 

' Your interesting and delightful book arrived last week just as I 
was starting for London whence I returned to the midst of a party here 
which has only left this morning, so somehow I never found a moment 
to write even a line of thanks together with much appreciation of the three 
or four opening chapters which I read at breakfast the morning Joey 
Vance came here. 

' My first impression was like that from Treasure Island or A Man oj 
Mark, a somewhat startled amusement at the outrageous company of 
the fighting circles you introduce one to — not unmixed wath sympathy for 
the throwing of the bottle which drops so miraculously into the horrible 
sweep's eye. It made me think of the Irish account of a scrimmage, " I 
dropped my stick on Tim's head and unfortunately he died." 

' I shall now be able to continue to improve my acquaintance with the 
charming Miss Lossie and talk to you about her and j'our other creations 
by the time you and Mrs. De Morgan come here. Her creation of the five 
elder Mermaids is now here, provisionally hung, for the place requires 
some readjustment on account of light, and has been much admired. 
Francis Buxton said if its beauty could not receive justice and a sufi&- 
ciently good place, he would be delighted to relieve us of the difficulty ! 
But we are not going to let it be carried off elsewhere. I propose to hang 
up underneath the words of Hans Andersen (in Danish) how the five 
sisters floated up arm in arm for many an evening hour over the waters.' 

A somewhat melancholy interest is attached to this letter, as 
its writer died the following month ; but in the interval he had 
completed his perusal of Joseph Vance, and had been one of the 
first to point out that De Morgan's book was ' the work of an 
idealist with realistic details,' and how curiously but happily it 
combined ' the sentiments and traditions of the Victorian age 
with the more analytical methods of to-day.' Other letters ran 
as follows : — 

Sir William Richmond to William De Morgan. 

' 1906. 
' Have you seen the Spectator — get it ! Such eulogium of your novel ; 
two Cols. — I do congratulate you, old fellow. After such an article your 
book should sell like wildfire. My most affectionate congratulations to 
you both. 

' Yours ever, 

' W. Richmond.' 




s ^ 



s S 

w I: 



^ o ^ 
Ho-;-: 



JOSEPH VANCE 249 

Mrs. Morris to William De Morgan. 

' July ijih, 1906. 
' The Old Hospital, Burford. 
' Bbah Bill, — 

' I don't think I have ever written you a letter before, but this is 
such a very grand occasion that I feel I must put pen to paper and say 
how happy your book has made me. I have not laughed so much for 
many a long year. Lossie is deUghtful, I had to stop reading when she 
had gone to India ; but started afresh when I remembered there was 
more Mr. Vance to come. What a dear he is ! — I can't write half what is 
in my mind to say in praise of the book, letter-writing being a lost art with 
me now. 

' May you give us many more books is my earnest wish. 

' Yours affectionately, 

' Jane Morris.* 

Mrs. Henry Holiday to William De Morgan. 

' Hawkshead, 

' Ambleside. 
' J^iy. 1906. 
' My dear William, — 

' I have never enjoyed the reading of any new book more in my 
life. I have only as yet finished the 4th chapter — but I have re-read them 
many times — always aloud to myself, for fear I lost the full delight of 
either manner or matter. Mr. Vance is quite as great a creation as 
" Janey " — and you never can tell when she begins, where she will end. 
She is a joy. I deUght in each one of your creations — from the Sweep who 
butted, all the theological parts, to the child who sucked his night-gown — 
the " Cards " — in fact, all of them. 

' Winifred ^ comes to-night — we shall set-to at once, and I shall be 
" a prevarication," for I shall have to make believe I haven't read any of 
it. And when we go back home next month we could not bear not to 
read it to Henry — and all the visitors (the best of course only) shall have 
bits read to them as soon as they are seated. It's like nothing else at 
all — but it recalls the time when Dickens first came out and the wonder 
of it all. Not that I mean you are like him or anyone else — the whole 
thing is so young and fresh and vigorous — you might be 17. 

' I can't pick and choose my words. I only feel in a tumult of happi- 
ness. I send you my most respectful love and isn't Evelyn proud ? 

' Your afiectionate old friend, 

' Kate Holiday.' 

* Such a eulogy/ wrote back De Morgan, ' should be thanked 
for on the nail ; accept my thanks hot, like little pies on a board 
from the baker's, that have not far to come.' 

Bernard Sickert to William De Morgan. 

' Crown Hotel, 

' Hay, Hereford, 
' Sun : September, 1906. 
' Dear Mr. De Morgan, — 

' You will not, I hope, think it " beastly cheek " for me to write 
and congratulate you on your wonderful book, Joseph Vance. It is long 
since I have enjoyed any novel, as I did this one, and its length was one 

» The writer's daughter. 



250 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

of " linked sweetness long drawn out." I was delighted with " this 'ere 
hinseck," and as for Mrs. Vance, senior, addressing Mr. Joseph as if he 
were a Basuto, I chortled so disgracefully over this in the Underground 
that I had to excuse and explain myself to an interested old gentleman. 
When a man makes a public nuisance of himself in a pubHc conve^nce, he 
is justified in saying, " Please, sir, it wasn't me, it was the other boy" — 
but the ethics of schoolboys requires that he shall then give the other boy 
the opportunity of punching liis head.' 

Mrs. Fleming {nee Kipling) to William De Morgan. 

' 7/1, Loudon Street, 

' Calcutta, 
' September -zoth, 1906. 
* Dear, and famous. Novelist, — 

' I haven't read it yet, it hasn't arrived in India — but its reviews 
have and what a chorus of praise they are ! Unanimous, is no word for 

it — " fore God they are all in a tale " 

' I tracked your meteor flight through many papers, purring loudly 
over the Review of Reviews and the Spectator — and then in the Bookman 
I found your portrait — looking quite kind and usual and not at all proud — 
and it emboldened me to write to you at once — Todgers has done it and 
no mistake and I cannot tell you how delighted I am. Oh, it's you must 
be a happy man and Evelyn a proud woman ! 

' I am so looking forward to making acquaintance with Joseph — and 
Miss Lossie. 

' And what is the title of your next book I wonder and the next after 
that? 

The same to the same. 

' 7/1, Loudon Street, 

' Calcutta. 
' Nov. 1st (but still 80° in the coolest room), 1906. 
' Joe came last Sunday and I have been reading him, and chuckling 
over him, and delighting in him and crying over him ever since. I never 
cry over a book so how do you expect me to forgive you for " the chapter 
that had to be ^vritten " ? I stood it bravely — with only a blink or two — • 
till I came to the " touch of the rings " when the hand " sUpped away for 
ever " — and then I had to get another handkerchief. How do you knotz- 
all the early part ? Where did you get the scenes and surroundings your 
childhood never knew — but which you depict with such perfect realism ? 
I want to know how long you have been writing it — and lots of things. 
It is less like a first book than was ever any. I believe — if we only knew 
the truth you have written a large number and published them anony- 
mously ! Perhaps you are a well-knowTi writer in disguise. Don't tell 
me that you are " Le Queux " or " Silas K. Hocking " — refreshing your 
soul by writing a real book after dozens of machine-made Ipopularities. 
But that Joe is really the first of all I cannot beheve. Where's crudity ? 
Where's indecision ? Where's stilted dialogue — and woolhness of charac- 
terization ? Perhaps you burnt all Joseph's elder bretliren (were there 
10 of them ?), if so I am very sorry but I look forward joyfully to Benjamin 
in the Spring. Your synopsis of him I like — but do I understand your 
" five ghosts " are all freed from their corpses — or still wearing them ? 
I am very much indebted to you for the " ghost in the corpse " plirase — 
and for the Doctor's opinions in Chap : XL and I should find it hard 
to tell you how much I appreciate the description of Cristoforo on Page 
462. I have not yet thanked you for your letter and the " Portrait of 



JOSEPH VANCE 251 

the Author with autograph." I'm glad your subhminal self wrote me 
down a niece before the mere supra-hminal You corrected it. 

' Finis took me in for two whole seconds and made me very angry — 
don't you think in your fourth or fifth edition you should have " Finis 
{but go on).'" I could not have borne it if Lossie had been left in the 
dark. 

' With my love and renewed and first hand congratulations. 

' Your affectionate, 

' Trix Fleming.' 

The following from Mr. Lock wood Kipling, the father of Mrs. 
Fleming, expresses an appreciation equal to her own. Mr. Kip- 
ling, who had been at one time connected with the manufactory 
of pottery at Burslem, and had subsequently held a post at the 
South Kensington Museum, had recently returned from Bombay, 
where he had for long filled an appointment at the School of Art. 
He also wrote brilliantly, but complained to De Morgan that he 
found it impossible to concentrate his attention on original 
compositiDn. ' How can I write,' he used to say, ' when I am 
dying to be out in the sun and the wind ? ' 

' TiSBURY, S.O. Wilts, 

' 21 November, 1906. 
' My dear De Morgan, — 

' Joseph Vance gave me some days of the most perfect pleasure an 
inveterate reader of my age can taste. And when I emerged from its 
glamour I said to myself I will write post-haste to its " onlie begetter." 

' But, as usual I dawdled, having more to say than seemed fair to 
inflict even on an author who had set himself aloft in the pillory of a 
great success. And I wrote to Trix telling her at some length about 
the book and saying that surely in weaving so delightful a story you must 
have been the happiest man alive. This, as you justly observe is scarcely 
a critical view and it only expresses one side of my appreciation. But a 
side to which your own title-page inclined me. You say " ill-written " — 
and, knowing an honest mind when I meet one, I looked for the reason. 
It seemed to me perhaps that you meant the book had written itself, that 
the folk of your fancy had taken charge of the pen and that in some 
sort the story had gone a la derive. I suppose most intensely felt and 
vivid work gives that impression — to writer possibly as to reader, and 
leads one to envy the man who has the good fortune to be taken by the 
hand and led through surprising and enchanting adventures. But when 
one looks closer, or rather perhaps a little further off, to get the perspec- 
tive right, it is plain that all the rules of the writer's art are observed, for 
there is nothing wanting of all the preparations, developments and unfold- 
ing prescribed since good story -writing first began. And the labour of 
love is also a triumph of sldll. 

' So, besides the congratulations one owes to a friend recently wedded 
(to the Muse) and evidently radiantly happy in his housekeeping, one has 
to dolf one's hat reverently to a skilful master who at one effort is in line 
with the most honoured names in English letters. 

' Is this a little sonorous ? Not a bit in my honest opinion. I am 
not given to heroics, only I feel — as Willie Laidlaw said to Sir Walter — 
" this is a varra supeerior occasion." 

' I don't think I should do more justice to it, though I might gratify 



252 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

the garrulity of my age, by yarning at large on the merits of the book as 
they appear to me. But I should want more sheets than you would care 
to read and the reviewers have doubtless told you as much as you care 
to know in this kind. 

' And, as plain matter of fact, to such art as yours, reviewers' and 
readers' opinions matter nothing. I am glad to think there is more 
coming.' 



Lady Tennant [Lady Glenconnery to William De Morgan. 

' I am going to recall myself to your remembrance on the strength of 
Joseph Vance, if it be not too intrusive, and to tell you how much, how 
greatly, how entirely I am enjoying the book, and to thank you for it. 
You knew me long ago when I was a little girl at the Grange visiting the 
Burne-Joneses, and once my Mother took mc with her to visit your tile- 
making place. I was Pamela Wyndham then, and now I am married and 
have five children and am Pamela Tennant. 

' But it strikes me all this is rather the letter that Beppino would have 
written, too much about himself, and I really want to express to you, if 
I can, how glad I am to think there is some one who is writing such a book 
as Joseph Vance. 

' W^ien I was at Clouds lately, I went over to see Mr. Lockwood KipUng 
at Tisbury, who is a very old friend of ours. And I found he knew your 
book, and we talked it over, and it was he who gave me your address. 
Of course for years we raved about your sister's stories — On a Pincushion 
and all the others — and now my cliildren love them, I am glad to say, 
and our only regret concerned with them is that there are not more. 

' On the occasion I spoke of when my Mother went to see your tiles, 
you gave me one that immensely took my fancy, it was a Do-Do bird, in 
green, and I have got the tile quite whole and safe now. I saw it the|other 
day and looked at it with quite new eyes, now that I know your book. 
I have a corner cupboard at home \vith glass doors where all my odds and 
ends and toys and treasures of childish days live, and that is where the 
Do-Do tile has been all these years, and that is how it has not been broken, 
I suppose. 

' There are countless things I am indebted to you for in the book. 
Aunt Izzy's mishearings for one — especially the one about serpents 
posting the letters. Then such bits as when Lossie comes into the[room 
at Sarry Spencer's home, and it seems as if all the blinds had been pulled 
up. Of course the first scene, most vivid and informed with life — I 
mean the scene of " crocking the hinsect " is delightful to me. . . . 
Christopher Vance is a great character — very new and absolutely real . . . 
but if I were to enumerate all the things in your book that I like, you'd 
read your whole book over again and I'd never have finished. ... I can't 
help Uking the couplet about the Body and Soul, although it's altogether 
horrible — so horrible that when I say it to myself, I generally finish with 
Ugh I 

' I am giving this book of yours away to people whom I feel I shall 
cease to care for if they don't like it too. . . .' 



1 Pamela, daughters of the Hon. Percy Scawen Wyndham, of Clouds, 
and granddaughter of the ist Baron Leconfield, married, in 1895, Edward 
Priaulx Tennant (son of Sir Charles Tennant, ist Bart., and brother of 
Mrs. Asquith), who succeeded to the Baronetcy in 1906, and was created 
1st Baron Glenconner in 191 1. He died in 1920. 



JOSEPH VANCE 253 

William De Morgan to Lady Tennant. 

' Via Lungo il Mugnone, 

' Florence. 

* Indeed neither you nor any of your family need recalling to my 
remembrance. How should they ? — though indeed it is true you are one 
of its members whom I have not met since the old never-to-be-forgotten 
days of the Grange. At least I think not, but speak short of certainty. 

' What a happiness it is to me to get letters like yours about Joe ! — 
a pleasure that two or three years ago the rashest anticipations would 
have flinched at. And do you know I get such a lot of appreciation on 
Joe's account that I am getting that vain there's no a-bearing of me, as 
Anne at Poplar Villa would have said ! The last two reviews I stuck in 
my egotism-nourishing book of cuttings were from Minnesota and Oregon — 
that I used to read Catlin about when I was a boy. Isn't it all funny ? 
Only, I'm not sure that it isn't even funnier that I should just be going 
to write out what you say of my sister's fairy-stories to Cairo, of all places 
in the world, where she is actually bossing a reformatory of small female 
Arab waifs and strays, with sable Nubians for surbordinates I How she 
will enjoy my quotation from your letter ! 

' Let me thank you very much for one thing about Joe — ^your allusion 
to Aunt Izzy. Do you know I have been made quite unhappy by deaf 
people who have supposed her to be a piece of unfeeling ridicule of an 
infirmity no one pities more honestly than I do. I had an anonymous 
letter from a poor deaf lady, who could not say too much in praise of the 
book, but implied that all her pleasure had been spoiled by Aunt Izzy. 
She couldn't understand why lame people should not be " made game 
of " too. This way of looking at it seems to me to drag the whole thing 
into a false light. A report of telephone blunders, however laughable in 
themselves, are no garment of derision for those who make them. I am 
so glad anyone should read Aunt Izzy and not think me an unfeeling 
beast. 

' The couplet Body and Spirit, etc., is from a little volume of Swin- 
burne's I have never seen — know it only from quotation — called " The 
Seven against Sense " — parodies of Tennyson, etc. What I have come 
across was perfectly lovely. Do you know when I repeated those two 
lines to Morris once he said, " Well ! I call that good common sense." 

' I must really read Auerbach's On the Heights one day — I have so 
often heard about it. Such a lot of things I've never read ! ! 

' I mustn't cover this sheet — neither time nor reason permit it. Thank 
you again, and yet once more for your letter. 

' Give my love and my wife's to your mother — totidem verbis.' 

* A Stranger to William De Morgan. 

' Golden Gate Avenue, 

' Point Richmond, 

'Cal., U.S.A. 
' Dear William De Morgan, — 

' Pardon the apparent familiarity — it is affection that dictates the 
" William "—(I'd hke to call you Joey). 

' I have just finished Joseph Vance, and so powerful is the impression 

on me that I cannot just shut the book (as I do others) and put it away. 

' I have just to speak to some one about it — ^there is (alas !) no one 

^ For obvious reasons the anonymity of letters is preserved where the 
communications are confidential in tone and it has been impossible to 
ascertain if the writers would object to the publication of their names. 



254 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

near me who would understand, if I did speak. Something probably 
would be said tliat would wound me, as I feel now — that is why I choose 
to speak to you, the Creator of this wonderful book. 

' The impression it has made upon me may be gathered from the 
enclosed page ^ — 1 was so worked up, I had to sit down and try to comfort 
poor Joey. 

' I remember, years ago, 1 did the same thing when I lost my Janey — 
I wrote her a letter. 

' You have wrung my heart ; I remember only once feeling something 
of the same when I read Peter Ibbetson by du Maurier, and in a much less 
degree David Copperfield ; but in those days I was young and it did not 
hurt so much, but now alas ! I am old and alone. . . . 

' This is the first work of yours I have read, and greatly as I admire 
you, I am almost afraid to look into another, I shan't want to for a long 
time anyway — indeed I don't know how you could have the heart to 
write anything more — it's enough for one lifetime. 

' I part with Joey with great reluctance, he is so human and so loveable, 
and altogether he has brought a " web of strange filaments of pain that 
keep my eyes dim " — yet I take some comfort from his question " what 
profit to oneself is the indulgence of grief at the best. Of how much 
less if each pang adds a new pang to other pain elsewhere.'' 

' As for you, William De Morgan, may you live long and prosper is 
the wish of a lonely human being who loves books.' 

' My pen,' wrote De Morgan from Devonshire in the autumn 
of 1906, ' is simply aching with the amount of work it has to do 
in answering friends' letters, known and unknown, about /. V. 
These letters are not meant to be compulsory of answers, but it 
is wonderful how compulsory they become. I find they inter- 
fere seriously with what I wanted to be a rest. . . . Yet I 
prize my magazine of congratulatory correspondence. But oh ! 
the blunders that turn up ! the stupid pen-slips one makes ! and 
the palpable errors one overlooks ! I have actually called Cheyne 
Row Cheyne Walk after living there sixteen years ! ' 

Professor Mackail to William De Morgan. 

' 12th Nov., 1906. 
' Cher et grand MaItre, — 
' Have 5^ou read the flaming advertisement of Joseph that Heine^mann 
is putting out ? I have just had the exquisite jo}'' of reading it, in huge 
letters on half a column of the Athencsum. In case of any awkwardness 
with Them Above, I think you ought to go at once and drop one of your 
best tiles into the Arno (the Mugnone would no doubt be handier, but 
there would be a greater risk of its being fished out and returned to you 
like the ring of Polycrates). Read and blush — 

JOSEPH VANCE 
Universally proclaimed 

THE greatest NOVEL OF 
THE DAY. 

' I think it was mean of him to drop his voice on the last word. Age 
would have rounded it olf better and would have been less trouble to the 
printers to set up. 

* Unfortunately lost. 



i 


$. 


d. 


12,000 








8,000 








5 


6 


8 


25,000 









JOSEPH VANCE 255 

' Some day I hope to see a list showing the sums paid to authors for 
works of fiction, somewhat as follows (the first two items are real facts) 

Mrs. Humphry Ward , , , 
Winston Churchill ... 
J. W. Mack AIL .... 
W. De Morgan .... 

* No,' De Morgan replied from Florence on November 20, 
' I haven't seen that advt. — not yet awhile. I didn't blush at 
all ! As I believe your own daughter once said to her Granny 
— " Much wants more ! " and I'm going in deliberately for as 
much self-laudation by deputy as I can get. Of course it ought to 
be Age not day ! You see, I shall have to climb down next 
novel ; so I am just carpe-ing the diem, I sometimes stop in the 
street to give three cheers for Joe. 

' I am, however, receiving many letters of a steadying and 
balancing sort. Mary is writing me fearful castigations from 
EgjT'pt on account of a story I sent her to read. My bad taste 
and vulgarity are, it seems, a caution for snakes — of the sort 
that have those predispositions. Also my dropping into politics 
will, she says, lose me every friend I have in the world, especially 
you and Margot. I need not say I have promised not to pub- 
lish it. There's only 75,000 words at most, so it doesn't matter. 

' I am catching it from other correspondents too. A deaf 
lady writes me a reproachful letter about Aunt Izzy. I am cruel 
and unfeeling ! Why are not blind people made game of too ? 
And characters with wooden legs ? Her letter was anonymous, 
otherwise I should have written to her that I was not respon- 
sible — it was inspiration — a low class of " mediumship." The 
fact is if the image of a party gets into my poor old 'ead, that 
image says things of its own accord, and I am too lazy at the 
time to run the whole universe through my head to see if anyone 
can possibly object. I know I ought to, though. 

' Do you know I have really been severely blown up for 
making Lossie talk of a " little pot-bellied Archdeacon," and 
when I lent the book to the dearest of old boys (in the West of 
England too) who in some sense was a P.B.A., I burst into a 
cold perspiration when I recollected it. I hardly dare look a 
friend in the face now who wears a real Hat,^ and I feel that 
99 per cent, of my English friends either despise or hate me for 
slamming (a Yankee phrase) in national beverage. I know I 
shall fall a victim to the dirk of an incensed Homeopath one of 
these days. . . . Dear me ! what a lot of illegible rot . . . 
there now, isn't that poetry ? 

* This refers to Christopher Vance's Top Hat, ' the hat representative 
of Capital, for which he went to iSs. by reason of moral influence and well 
worth it at the money, he said.' 



356 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

' I heard from Heinemann that Macmillans had made over- 
tures to him about the next book, and possibly they might agree 
to co-operate somehow. How, I don't know — tfut that's not 
my look out. ... I can't make out about the net books, etc. 
But I saw particulars of parcels of spent novels in yesterday's 
Times — ten uncut for i8s. 6i., pubUshed at 6s. each ! ! ! ! ' 

' What a pity,' wrote back Mackail jestingly, ' that you 
didn't actually take to politics so as to have become " Viscount 
De Morgan of the Vale " — how well it would have sounded ! ' 

But still De Morgan did not regard his change of profession 
seriously, ' for,' as he explained later, Cockney- wise, ' when I 
took to it, I had been so long outside the pale making tiles not 
tyles [tales] ! ' And still his thoughts clung to that other career 
wliich he had been forced to abandon. ' If J.V. runs like mad,' he 
wrote to Ricardo, ' I shall be able to push Fulham — and I hope 
Capital will feel ashamed of himself ! What is the use of a 
Rockefeller unless he trusts me with blank cheques ? ' 

From the other side of the Atlantic, the real Mr. Vance, ' the 
American Edition,' as he termed himself, wrote with enthusiasm 
on receipt of his fictitious namesake : ' I am really afraid of 
seeming to " gush " when I try to put my appreciation into 
words. It is truly very fine indeed — the most thoroughly satis- 
fying book I have read since David Co-pperfield, and after drawing 
a comparison between ' David ' and ' Joseph,' he says : — 

' There are so few books written to-day. We write abbreviated yarns 
in curtailed phrases and clipped English, with one eye on the rate per 
word and the other on the Publisher, who points sternly to the 100,000 
word figure and declares, " Thus far shalt thou go and no farther.'' So 
we write few Books ; and fewer yet are published. It's a real pleasure, 
then, to get acquainted with a Joseph Vance — a book that you cannot 
read in one hour and forget in the next ; a book whose people live and 
breathe and stay with you, remaining your friends for always. 

' There's mighty little Vance in the story — Vance as we Vances know 
it, of course. But that's no matter. I'm glad that you remembered the 
name and liked it well enough to use it. Because that makes me feel 
somehow (and irrationally enough) as if I knew you. . . . 

' But one can't help wondering how much (or how little) is autobio- 
graphical, just as one can't help feeling glad because Janey didn't really 
get drowned — the real " Janey," I mean . . . and one hopes that she will 
live long to be proud of Joseph.' 

William De Morgan to Louis Joseph Vance. 

' September , 1906. 
' I am afraid you must be thinking me shockingly ungrateful for your 
most generous expression of opinion about your " unconscious Boswell's" 
literary venture. I can only hope I deserve some margin of it that Ues 
beyond what I take to be a like criterion to one that has procured me a 
criticism far beyond my merits in England — a certain liberality of welcome 
to an old chap who really has done more than anyone could reasonably 
have expected of him 1 



JOSEPH VANCE 257 

' In reply to a question in your letter, my book is no more my auto- 
biography than Terence (I trust) is yours. I cannot even think 
without a shudder of any acquaintance of mine (even epistolary ones, 
which I absurdly forget we are, sometimes) having been involved in 
events that were " all bluggy like anyfmk "—of course, you know Helen's 
immortal Babies ? 

' Also there is not a single portrait in it anywhere. . . . 

' My wife in her character of the " real Janey " thanks you for sharing 
her own gladness that she is not dro\vned, and also for the pleasure she has 
had in reading Terence. 

' Am I, I wonder, addressing an entirely false image of you as I write 
— and vice versa ? I look forward to one day confirming or correcting it.' 

Perpetually questioned, however, respecting his relation to 
his own work, De Morgan wrote : ' I have been asked how I 
came to write Joseph Vance ? Why I didn't write it before ? 
Why didn't I make it shorter ? Why didn't I make it longer ? 
What is the underlying import and final issue ? What am I a- 
haimin' at ? and so on. I have also been asked why I didn't 
omit Christopher Vance and make more of Peter Gunn ; also 
why I didn't leave out Janey and the wreck, and have nothing 
but Lossie all through. 

' As to why I didn't write it before, I can't answer. I give 
it up. But I know how I came to write it this time. I wrote 
the first chapter to try if I could write fiction ; and having 
decided that I couldn't, put it away in a drawer. That was the 
end of Chapter I — for that year, at any rate. . . . 

* As to why I didn't make it shorter, and longer, I did both. 
I did the last first, and the first last ; I did not want to be the 
death of Mr. Heinemann. Six hundred pages there were. I 
must say he was almost heroic about it. " Don't spoil the book 
by cutting it, on any account," said he. " But do what you 
can." I did what I could, cancelled as many pages as I could 
wrench out, and sent the rest back again — not the six hundred. 

' As to the ultimate purport and final issue : Speaking seri- 
ously, I suppose no one ever writes a thick book of close print 
without some kind of aim : some dominant idea. But he may 
not be able to define it, for all that. I am quite unable to do so, 
in the case of this book. The dominant idea may be the chord 
of the Waldstein, or the problem of how to dedicate a lifetime 
of devotion — of sane and human love — to two women at once. 
Which is it to be ? I cannot tell ! 

' As to the other queries, I can only say I wish I could have 
left out about Janey and the wreck, or got some one else to 
write it. And as to Peter Gunn, I would have put in more about 
him, only I was afraid he would come and butt at me. For he 
was or is a real person, with his name slightly changed. His 
original — poor fellow — killed a policeman many years ago, and 
it took eighteen powerful men to convey him to the station. 



258 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

His name was Jim Cannon. I cannot answer for this being more 
than forty-five years back, but I think it was about that date. 
He is absolutely the only real person in the book.' 

Punch meanwhile rang the changes amusingly on the dual 
' Joseph Vances.' 

' Mr. Louis Joseph Vance's new book is called The Private War,'' it 
announced, ' but previous to its publication, Mr. William De Morgan had 
written Joseph Vance. The hero and narrator of the Private War is 
Gordon Traill, and it only remains for Traill to write Mr. De Morgan, 
and then the matter will be fairly settled.' 

Mr. Vance likewise wrote to narrate how an artist having 
drawn a ' very counterfeit presentment ' of him in fancy dress : — 

' A San Francisco Editor published it as a portrait of my hero, Terence 
O'Rourke ! which, together \vith the appearance of my unexpected 
autobiography, is so confusing that I hardly know whether I am myself 
or an Irish Adventurer all bluggy and broguey, or the real Joseph Vance ! 

From Mr. Vance, De Morgan learnt that in America ' Joseph 
has a coat of many more colours than that which Mr. Heinemann 
has fitted him with for his public appearance in England ' ; and 
De Morgan subsequently discovered that the American edition 
of the book had been brought out in a pale cover adorned with 
a gay decoration of three chessmen, representing a Knight and 
two Queens, a singularly happy indication of a plot which dealt 
with the influence of two women upon the hero's life. This 
design greatly pleased De Morgan. ' If,' he wrote, ' it is specially 
planned for my book, it is very clever. If it is the usual Holt's 
monogram, it is one of the oddest of the many oddities that 
have attended this book ! ' Next, in reference to similar ' oddi- 
ties,' Mr. Vance replied : — 

' I am going to cap your experiences with the remark of a dear lady, 
a Vance by marriage (not my ISIissis !) who, after reading Joseph Vance, 
expressed her verdict of it that it was a most charming book — bat — (with 
a sigh) she could have wished that Christopher had been born in a little 
better station in Society ! . . . She is an American, too ! ' 

Later, referring to the fact that De Morgan's novel was 
announced as one of the ' six best sellers,' Mr. Vance relates : — 

' Some time ago, you know, the New York Herald published a half- 
page or more of burlesque of my new book, and mighty clever it was too. 
[ am reminded of it by that term " best-seller." You see, when the 
burlesque hero was cavorting about in the Frognall Street House, he 
paused long enough to remark, aside : " My, how stuffy it is here ! Why, 
It smells as musty as all six of the best cellars ! " ' 

Meanwhile the curiosity of Joseph Vance, the author, re- 
specting the author of Joseph Vance increased. ' In my father's 



JOSEPH VANCE 259 

Life,' wrote De Morgan, ' is mention of a man with whom he 
corresponded for thirty years — and never met. I hope that 
won't be our fate ! ' 

' A friend in New York,' announced Mr. Vance, ' wrote me 
yesterday that he had discovered a portrait of my hterary god- 
father in the Bookman, so I have sent for that pubHcation and 
hope presently to discover if I am addressing an entirely false 
image of you.' 

By and by came the verdict : — 

' Quaintly enough, I, for one, had not created a false image of you, 
not very false, at least ; you are much as I reckoned you must be, from 
your letters, from your book, from any number of impressions I had 
subconsciously received since I wrote that impudent note bidding you 
stand and deliver one copy of Joseph Vance ! So I am pleased beyond 
measure.' 

But while Joseph Vance was flying through the press, and 
there was no longer any doubt respecting its success, erroneous 
rumours were current respecting the identity of the author. For 
a time few connected the name of William De Morgan with that 
of his father, the famous mathematician ; as did few, who were 
not personal friends, with that of the aforetime maker of tiles. 
On receiving a packet of American newspaper-cuttings from Mr. 
Vance purporting to give much information about his antece- 
dents which was apocryphal, De Morgan wrote out to the latter 
a brief account of his life in order that Mr. Vance might be in a 
position to contradict all false reports. The gist of what he 
therein related concerning the past is known to us ; but it was 
endorsed by a description of mere recent experiences from the 
pen of his wife : — 

Evelyn De Morgan to Louis Joseph Vance. 

' 19 lungo il mugnone, 

' Florence, Italy, 
' 27/A October, 1906. 
' Dear Mr. Vance, — 

' Ever since Joseph Vance saw the light of print last June, I have 
been floundering, gasping, gurgling in a sea of fiction, and now comes your 
kind note and enclosures to my husband with yet more and more fiction, 
till I feel I must make an effort to know who I am ; and still more what 
sort of cameleon kind of a bogy of a husband I seem to have been har- 
bouring unawares. I want sympathy and enlightenment, and I feel sure 
you will be kind — -you, and Mxs. Vance — and listen to my tale of bewilder- 
ment. 

' First, I am emphatically told that I wcis (Janey) drowned cfi the 
coast of Spain, and a column erected to my memory ; then when, with all 
the vitality I possess, aided by what I may be allowed to term the plas- 
ticity of my appearance, I protest, I am fixed by the soul-searching eye 
of a friend, and the announcement made that I am Lassie ! and that 
there can be no doubt whatever about that ! Next comes another friend 
who drops the Lossie, and I find I am again Airs. De Morgan, this time it 



26o WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

is a hesitating confidential inquiry as to " If I have any idea how Mr. De 
Morgan came to know so much about lower class life, etc. ? but perhaps 
it is indiscreet to ask ! perhaps they ought not to nave inquired." And 
I am left with a sense of dark corners in the past. Then I am cheered by 
another less compromising view of the position. " My dear, your husband 
is a medium ; it is the only way of accounting for his knowledge of the 
lower classes, his writing is inspired." This sets me up a little and I am 
beginning to feel better, when another friend assures me positively that 
he was a drunkard in a previous state of existence, otherwise it would be 
quite impossible for him to write with such feeling about drink. 

' And now, dear Mr. Vance, come your kind enclosures, and I read in 
print that my husband is an old artist well over 70, and brother of the 
mathematician. 

' Now first of all he is not 70, indeed he is not, I was not there when he 
was born, it is true, in fact they would have had to put it off a good many 
years for me to be present, but I feel sure his mother would have told me 
if he could have been 70 now, then how can he be his father's (the mathe- 
matician's) brother ? that's what puzzles me most of all ; and lastly it 
is / that am the artist, he is the potter, and makes lustre tiles and bowls, 
to his great cost and the satisfaction of many. Now if ever you read to 
the end of this long letter the only reward I can ofier you in gratitude 
for your forbearance and patience is my solemn assurance that I do not 
beUeve you are in the secret service of the Czar or that you are busy 
waging a private war with any one, I repudiate the notion that you stabbed 
Netze to the heart, or that i^lrs. Vance clinched matters with a revolver. 
I can enjoy and thank you for your stories of dire adventure, without 
incriminating the innocent author of the tale. 

' So far had I written, when this morning's post brings your letter 
with the photos, forwarded on from London, and to crown it all I find 
that truth has proved herself to be stranger than fiction and that Mrs. 
Vance too is an artist ! Well I hope she will tell me what she is painting, 
and now that I know I have a sister brush on the other side of the Atlantic, 
I feel still more anxious that my humble efforts should not be regarded 
as sort of mystic projections of what my husband will do when he is 70, 
sort of astral things you know, not good honest wholesome paint and 
canvas, produced by the writer of this letter, and who has had what is 
technically known as a " one man show " a few years back in Berlin, and 
who held a similar show in London last summer, and who in order to 
combat the evil effect of a sedentary life, goes to a swimming bath at 7 
o'clock in the morning in summer (by the way, could the artist of 70 have 
grown out of that ?) and does Sandow exercises in the winter mornings, I 
recommend these practices to Mrs. Vance, and shall make bold to send 
her a photo of a big picture [The Valley of Shadows] I have not long since 
completed if she will be good enough to accept it. 

' My husband is writing to you, he is just off a sea voyage or you would 
have heard from him sooner. Our yearly migration to milder climes 
has intervened and correspondence has suffered in consequence. 

' BeUeve me with kind regards to Mrs. Vance and the same to yourself, 

' Very truly yours, 

' Evelyn De Morgan.' 

' What a pity,' wrote De Morgan genially at length to Mr. 
Vance, ' that you live such a long way off ! ' and Mr. Vance 
responded with equal affability but a note of interrogation — 
' A long way from where ? ' 




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CHAPTER XI 

THE MAN AND THE METHOD 
I 906- I 90 7 

* TTOW do you know whether j^ou are successful or not at 
JTJL forty-one ? ' AUce asks in Aliu-for-Short when Charles 
Heath laments the failure of his life as an artist. ' How do you 
know you won't have a tremendous success all of a sudden ? 
Yes — after another ten years of real happy work. It has all 
been before, this sort of thing— Wliy not you ? ' And as De 
Morgan, writing his second novel, penned these words, he knew 
that the ' success all of a sudden ' had come in his own life — 
not at the age of forty-one, but at sixty-seven, when the faculties 
of most men are on the wane — when they are thinking languidly 
of laying aside the work which has engrossed their manhood, 
in order to enjoy a well-earned rest during the few remaining 
years while they await death. 

The recognition was at first incredible to him. ' Really,' he 
wrote to his publisher, ' anyone would think from the letters I 
get from all over the Globe that I had written the Holy Bible — 
only Bowdlerized, of course ! I dare say my shower of testi- 
monials is only every author's experience. Only, you see, it's 
all new to me ! ' 

He was the more surprised at his success when he gradually 
understood that his outlook and his methods were entirely out 
of harmony with the alleged taste of the age. With remarkable 
prescience — since at the time the writer knew nothing of the man 
of whom he wrote — Professor Phelps, criticizing De Morgan's 
first book, wrote : ' Despite the likeness to Dickens in characters 
and atmosphere, Joseph Vance sounds not only as though its 
author had never written a novel previously, but as though he had 
never read one. It has all the strangeness of reality.' And this, 
suspected by the critic, was curiously near the truth. 

' The fact is,' De Morgan said to a friend, ' I have blundered 
into the wrong generation. I belong entirely to the Dickens 
period of life and literature. I read greedily when Pickwick 
was up-to-date, and when all the world was as Dickens drew it. 
Afterwards I plunged into an active life in which every moment 

261 



262 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

of my time was absorbed by art, by chemical problems or mechani- 
cal inventions, and for forty years I scarcely looked in a book 
unless it was about pots or mechanisms. When I turned again 
to literature, I took it up exactly where I had left it off — the 
interregnum did not exist for me.' He was like Jane Verrinder 
in Alice-for-Short , that strangely fascinating creation of his brain, 
the old-young bride who, after a lifetime of forgetfulness as the 
result of an accident, during which her body has aged and her 
mind remained dormant, resumes consciousness precisely where 
she has lost it — in the hey-day of a long-vanished youth and a 
long-dead world. 

And it was, contrary to all precedent, just this sense of a 
resuscitation in De Morgan's novels — the piquancy of contrast 
between the present and what he termed ' then-a-days ' — which, 
depicted by a masterhand, caught the public imagination. With 
a happy unconsciousness he had defied the orthodox standards 
of his age, and they melted away before his charm. In his 
penmanship he was tender, he was strong, he was daring ; yet 
about all which he wrote there clung a romance that was elusive — 
something of the delicate aroma of a treasure which has been 
laid by in lavender and which, half-ghostly in its essence, stirs 
memories that are wholesome, and clean, and sweet. 

Admittedly he was one bom out of due season. He belonged 
to a date before the Age of Hurry, and he refused to be dictated 
to by the mere passing of Time. As a reviewer pointed out : 
' He outraged every canon of convention ; public taste had 
decreed that books should be short, brilliant, superficial — impres- 
sionist, yet couched in exquisite and studied language.' From 
the first, De Morgan declined to be hustled ; he allowed his 
pen to wander over the paper without let or hindrance ; he 
indulged in the graphic slang and the rollicking puns of a school- 
boy ; the cockney of a coster ; the phraseology of a poet ; the 
profundity of a philosopher. There are passages in his books 
which tear at the heart-strings ; there are others which leave 
the reader amazed at the light-hearted irresponsibility which 
so penned them. He troubled about no studied periods or 
finished diction ; he has been described as a man who button- 
holed his reader and talked to him in homely fashion. He did 
not even tell a story— he let the characters in his story speak for 
themselves. If he reviewed a situation he reviewed it entirel}' 
from the standpoint of his puppets — in their language ; the tale 
with its ingenious perplexities spun itself out of their very human 
sayings and emotions. He was discursive, he digressed, he 
soliloquized at will ; again and yet again he was pithy, he was 
sapient, he was subtle : but always he was simple and sincere. 
His pictures of Life were exact. He was in literature what a 
Pre-Raphaelite is in painting — he showed a passion for minute- 



THE MAN AND THE METHOD 263 

ness and for accuracy of workmanship — for a whole flawless in 
detail. His finished work was like some delicate mosaic fashioned 
of minutiae which a smaller genius would have ignored. It was 
said of him, ' he gets his sharpest and most telling effects by the 
perfect skill with which he introduces the multitude of trivial 
details, unimportant in themselves, but momentous in their 
bearing on the growth of character and event, and indispensable 
if the life recorded is to reflect fully and faithfully life as it is 
lived.' But he saw that the tale of each man's existence is 
woven in a work-a-day world — that life itself is but a sequence 
of trivialities in which the greater hinge on the lesser and each 
has an imperceptible bearing on the whole. He wrote : — 

' Be good enough to note that none of the characters in this story are 
picturesque or heroic — only chance samples of folk such as you may see 
pass your window now, this moment, if you will only lay your book down 
and look out. They are passing — passing — all day long, each with a story. 
And some little thing you see, a meeting, a parting, may make the next 
hour the turning point of an existence. For it is of such little things the 
great ones are made ; and this is a tale made up of trifles — trifles touching 
human souls that, for aught we know to the contrary, may last for ever.' 

' De Morgan's chief occupation throughout half a normal 
lifetime,' writes a critic, ' was the beauty of minute detail, the 
quality of glaze upon a teacup, the excellence of colour or design 
in a tile. His is the type of mind which gradually through the 
passage of years might be expected to gather up a treasure-house 
of fine, delicate, unique ideas about life in general, much as a 
connoisseur gathers together rare gems of porcelain quite indif- 
ferent as to whether they group themselves harmoniously upon 
their respective shelves.' Out of the garnered experience of a 
lifetime he wrote, out of the reality of the Past he fashioned 
the fiction of the Present ; but the habit common to all reviewers 
of desiring to identify each place and person in a work of imagina- 
tion, or to foist upon an author, as his own, opinions expressed 
by his puppets, was strongly resented by him. 

' When I read Joseph Vance over after publication,' he ad- 
mitted, ' I found I could pick out little bits here and there which 
were real, in that they were personal experiences of my own or 
were things coming within my knowledge of others. But there 
is not a trace of my own life in the story, except, perhaps, the 
pages about engineering patents. On the other hand, Charles 
Heath in Alice-for-Short is largely reminiscent of my own life as 
an art-student — though there is one great exception — Charles d3.d 
more work ! But in no one instance is there an actual portrait 
drawn as such, nor an actual place literally portrayed.' In short, 
the whole was such stuff as dreams are made of, a phantasmagoria 
bred of events that once had happened, of ideas once absorbed, 
impressed haphazard into a creation distinct from reality. The 
potter moulds his pot and the novehst his story out of the material 



264 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

ready to his hand ; yet in their new guise each becomes an 
original conception of the worker's brain. 

Thus to those who know the story of De Morgan's hfe previous 
to his htcrary adventure, an essence, but not a transcript, of those 
earher years may be traced in much which he wrote. In Dr. 
Thorpe we see many of the characteristics of his father, the 
shrewd, kindly Professor ; in the discovery of Joe's talent for 
mathematics we recall a similar incident of the Professor's own 
boyhood ; in the brain and speech of the little children we trace 
something of the baby-boy at Fordhook — that baby with the 
wonderful forehead, to whose outlook on life De Morgan could 
still revert more than half a century afterwards — ' I remember 
my fourth birthday as if it were yesterday,' he had written at 
the age of sixty-five. In Charles Heath's denunciation of his 
own incapacity, as later in the lament of Eustace John, we 
read the writer's review of his own wasted years. Again, in his 
presentment of the sordid life of the slums we seem to hear 
his mother's piteous tales of m.id-Victorian poverty — of the 
alleys, the workhouses, the prisons, the asylums of her youth ; 
while in other descriptions of homely life we recognize his own 
close association with his factory hands. 

' There are comparatively few men in any age,' remarks Mrs. 
Ady, ' who have attained distinction in two separate branches 
of art. Great poet-painters there have been, it is true, such 
as Michelangelo in Italy of the Renaissance, and Dante Rossetti 
in our own times, but there was generally a close connexion 
between their creations in the different arts. Either the picture 
was inspired by the sonnet, or the verses gave birth to the painting. 
It would be difficult to trace any connexion between De Morgan's 
tiles and the novels which his prohfic pen poured forth in his 
later years. Yet, as I have often heard him explain, his novels 
were indirectly the result of his work as a potter. It was during 
these first fifty years of his life when he was busily engaged in 
making experiments, and looking about for boys and men whom 
he could train to help him, that he acquired the familiarity with 
the working classes and dwellers in the slums which is one of the 
most striking features of his books. The close and daily contact 
into which he was brought with his own potters, listening to their 
talk and watching them at work as he sat in a corner of the 
factory making designs or meditating new inventions, gave him 
that intimate knowledge of their habits and language, that 
insight into the points of view and prejudices of their class of 
which he writes with so much sympathy and kindly humour.' 

For De Morgan showed himself a past-master in his study of 
the mentality and mannerisms of the homely characters of whom 
he wrote, even in his queer trick of self-involutic i into their 
personality and speech. He reproduced faithfully their tasliion 



1 




William De Morgan 
From a photograph 



THE MAN AND THE METHOD 265 

of leaving a sentence incomplete but with its purport clear ; of 
elaborating with picturesque side-issues information which might 
have been conveyed in a few words. He understood that while 
a Product of Higher Education will go straight to the point in 
what he wishes to narrate, the Natural Man will eschew such 
prosaic methods and first wander leisurely — interminably — in a 
maze of his own cogitations. But in regard to the cockneyism 
which De Morgan employed so effectively, few know that it was 
the outcome of a jest of his youth— of the practice of years, 
the dialect facetiously affected by his early companions — Rossetti, 
William Morris, Bume-Jones — in their reaction against their 
own aestheticism as well as against the prim and stilted diction 
approved in their Victorian youth. 

In like manner, the houses, the streets, the scenes and sur- 
roundings where his characters live and move and have their 
being, are all constructed out of the collective memories of 
his own boyhood and manhood ; even in the names which he 
employs we find fresh memories of real life — often distorted with 
a hint of laughter.^ 

In his account of the ' extensive basement with cellarage ' 

at No. 40 , Soho, where little Alice-for-Short saw the ghostly 

' lydy with black spots,' and where later Messrs. Chappel and 
Pole carried on a business in stained glass, we recognize the 
basement at 40 Fitzroy Square, where De Morgan personally 
worked at stained glass in the early days of his career. There, 
the child of his imagination, httle Alice, a pitiful scrap of 
humanity, is depicted living in eternal twilight with her drunken 
father and mother, the monstrous cats and the intangible ghosts. 
The scene of the dance, on the contrary, where the eighteenth- 
century throng disported themselves on the night when the 
lady who stole the fateful ring was brutally murdered, is, De 
Morgan himself admitted, the ball-room in the house of Mrs. 
Siddons in Great Marlborough Street, where he and his wife 
jointly exhibited pottery and pictures. In that latter house, 
moreover, we feel the atmosphere of the story more imperatively, 
we trace the exact rooms which were in his thoughts. Again, 
there is an ' extensive basement,' gloomy and mysterious ; 
above it is the ground-floor with the ball-room aforesaid — in 
the story rented by the picture-dealer ; the first floor where 
Charles Heath had his studio ; the second floor belonging to 
the Misses Prynne, and the third floor where the odd Mr. Jerry- 
thought, painted and soliloquized. In this same house, however, 

^ ' Janey,' it will be remembered, was a nomenclature familiar to De 
Morgan from his early days, the name of his nurse at Fordhook. ' The 
Pigeons,' the public-house where the celebrated quarrel took place between 
Christopher Vance and the sweep, Peter Gunn, is a transposition of ' The 
Doves,' the ancient hostelry at Hammersmith, near Kebnscott House. 
' Peter Gunn,' we see, had an original Jim Cannon, and so on ad injiniium. 



266 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

occurs the death of poor Verrinder, which was suggested by the 
sudden death in her sleep of Miss Laura Hertford, who rented 
a floor at 40 Fitzroy Square — an event which made a profound 
impression on De Morgan in his youth, since he was among 
those who forced open the door and found the body. Yet 
Verrinder himself was drawn from ono of De Morgan's contem- 
poraries at the Academy schools, an old and pathetic perennial 
student, who haunted the place, and who, by a strange coinci- 
dence, bore the name of Pickering. Thus we can people each 
building with the creatures of the author's fancy, and recognize 
how his brain took a part of one house of his recollection, and a 
portion of another, to construct the whole dwelling of his dreams ; 
and how he modelled his characters in like fashion. 

So, too, in those evanescent but persistent ghosts which play 
such a prominent part in the tale, and link a shadowy past with 
a realistic present, one feels how the atmosphere of the Occult 
in which he had been brought up had permeated his outlook 
upon life, uniting the Seen and the Unseen in a romance and 
sequence which fascinated his imagination even if it never 
wholly convinced his reason. Stories of uncanny experiences 
which happened to the De Morgan family, and of their own 
attitude towards these, recur persistently to memory as one 
reads the tale of ghostly visitants in De Morgan's novels, made 
more convincing in Alice-for-Short by the halting speech and 
puzzled sincerity of a little child. ' Bogy things come and 
go ' throughout his books, but the author himself surveys them 
with an air of detachment. ' The characters discuss the ghostly 
appearances from their different angles ; but " the Story " [like the 
Professor and his son] takes no angle at all. It merely narrates. ' ^ 

There is, however, one other outcome of the past on which 
it is impossible to lay too much stress in reviewing the matter 
and the manner of De Morgan's writing ; and which, in the 
main, was the keynote of his success. 

Disraeli has said that ' books written by boys which pretend 
to deal with knowledge and give a picture of human nature 
must necessarily be founded on affectation.' It is only after 
a lifetime that, from the Pisgah-heights of experience, we can 
view existence at last in its true perspective — the little no longer 
looming big or the big little, but the whole mellowed to a just 
harmony of parts. Yet when that vantage ground is gained, 
the weariness of the climb is upon us and the chances are that 
we are no longer able to impart to others the benefit of that 
wider vision — and so we fall asleep with the tale untold. ' Si 
ieunesse savait — si vieillesse pouvait ' is a regret as poignant in 
literature as in life ; and De - Morgan was perhaps unique in 

* William De Morgan. A post- Victorian Recital, by F. Waxren Seymour, 
1920. 



THE MAN AND THE METHOD 267 

that he wrote with the keenness, the freshness, the intuition of 
Youth, tempered with the philosophy, the kindliness, the large- 
minded vision of Age. 

' There are scenes in his novels,' The Bookman remarks, ' that if a 
younger man had written them might have been mei-ely squahd and 
repellent, might have been shrewdly observed and cleverly presented, 
with something of cynical attachment or with gushes of pretty and false 
sentimentality ; but they could not have been handled with the largeness 
of comprehension, the easy charity, the kindly humour and whimsical, 
gracious forbearance that are the fruit of knowledge only, and that 
enable Mr. De Morgan to feel and reveal the whole truth instead of but 
half of it — the piteousness as well as the baseness of his grimmest incidents 
and most degrading characters. . . . 

' As a consequence, his good people are never too good, and you do not 
wholly blame hiis sinners when he has told you all about them. He has 
seen enough of life to be always ready to make allowances and never 
ready to condemn or despise. He draws you some besotted human 
creature with a most unflinching realism, then changes your abhorrence 
into sympathy and compassion by showing you in a luminous paragraph 
or two what the poor wretch used to be and how he grew to be the thing 
he is. This profound tenderness for human weakness is an undertone 
tlirough all his books. . . . 

' He makes his stories satisfyingly plausible and realistic by his ingrained 
habit of looking before and after. He cannot even see a shivering, withered 
old crone serving out a ha'porth of baked chestnuts over her charcoal 
fire without reflecting that those skinny, claw-like hands were once the 
beautiful hands of a young girl ; he is never contented to sketch the least 
insignificant of his characters in outline only, he must needs give you the 
whole man and the whole woman by deliberately linking up their to-days 
with their yesterdays, so that you know their dispositions, the environ- 
ments that shaped them, the motives that actuate them, and can guess 
how they will l)ehave in a given crisis before the crisis is upon them.' 

Thus, in Alice-for-Short, after describing the wonderful scene 
where the fascinating Peggy and little Alice visit the mother of 
the latter as she lies dying in the hospital — a drunken wreck of 
humanity battered to death in a squahd row by the equally 
besotted husband she had once loved — the reviewer notes how 
quietly but powerfully De Morgan can yet make one feel that 
that repulsive, drink-sodden wretch has had part in a far-away, 
far-other past : — 

' No younger writer could have written that. Its whole power lies 
in its sheer truthfulness ; there is no attempt at all at fine writing or 
idealized dialogue. I recall pathetic passages from many great novels, 
but can think of none more quietly effective, more touching in its sim- 
plicity of narrative, its underlying sense of tragedy, its covert under- 
standing of, and pity for, human error.' ^ 

So it is that while the incidents described by De Morgan are 
fictitious, the Self underlying the whole is real. It is his own 
character which he has written into his pages — it breathes from 
every phrase — his own insight, his own humour, his all-pervading 
tenderness, his large-hearted understanding of his fellow creatures 
* The Bookman, August, 1910. 



268 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

which Time had wrought. He can view Life with an unflagging 

sense of amusement ; he can see humanity with a keen recognition 

of its weakness ; but there is never a hint of bitterness or of 

sarcasm in his dehneation of the foibles of his fellows. The 

cynicism noticeable in Thackeray, the sense of caricature and 

exaggeration which occasionally mars the writing of Dickens, 

are wholly absent from the imagination of De Morgan. ' In 

that book you unpacked your mind,' a friend once said to him 

of Joseph Vance ; and he is just an old man talking to us 

genially of the Past — of people he has known, events that have 

happened, conclusions he has arrived at, of by-gone days which 

to him are dearer than the Present ; while his very garrulousness 

is part of his charm. 

« * « * * 

In his affinity to Dickens, so often discussed, De Morgan's 
relation is primarily to the Period, not to the Man. Dickens, as 
we have seen, represented the Zeitgeist of his youth. The 
atmosphere which he had breathed ' when all the world was 
young ' and his mind plastic, had been permeated with the 
spirit, the spell, the wonderment of the great novelist ; but, 
above all, it was his own world. The people he had talked to 
and of, the people with whom he was one, are those depicted 
in the pages of Dickens. The early photographs of De Morgan 
illustrate this in a manner which, to us of a later generation, is 
almost startling, for they represent a youth who in dress, in 
appearance— and one feels in speech — might have stepped from 
the pages of David Copperfield. ' We had not read far into 
Joseph Vance before we shouted " Dickens i^eiuwMS !"* wrote 
Professor Phelps ; ' but,' he added, ' it was not an imitation ; 
it was a reincarnation.' It was more — it was a survival. 

Between Dickens and De Morgan there exists indeed that 
similarity of date and manner ; but the achievement of each 
remains distinct and individual. ' If Dickens had never written 
a word, your novels would be just as they are ! ' wrote Mrs. Drew. 
Both, it is true, painted on a broad canvas ; both dehghted in a 
number of subsidiary characters — in one of De ^lorgan's novels 
no fewer than forty-two dramatis-personcB are introduced ; both 
loved to develop in ample, leisurely fashion an old-time romance 
with plot and counter-plot ; but there are essential points of 
difference between the men and their methods which no super- 
ficial similarity can disguise. 

For one, whereas Dickens relates a story and tells you about 
the puppets which figure in it, we have seen that De Morgan 
allows the creatures of his fancy to reveal themselves. When 
he is not soliloquizing, or talking confidentially, the tragi-comedy 
of his narrative unfolds itself entirely out of the clipped, colloquial 
dialogue of the actois ; he gets his most telhng effects by a 



THE MAN AND THE METHOD 269 

sequence so simple, so intensely human that one scarcely recog- 
nises its profundity till this has stamped itself upon one's imagi- 
nation indelibly. ' The astonishing freshness and charm of 
Mr. De Morgan's method,' wrote Professor Phelps, ' consist 
partly in his abandonment of literary precedent, and adhering 
only to actual observation. It is as though an actor on the 
stage should suddenly drop his mannerism of accent and gesture 
and behave as he would were he actually, instead of histrionically, 
happy or wretched.' His pathos and his insight are thus greater 
than that of Dickens because they follow a closer parallel to 
nature ; his humour, to a modern ear, is more spontaneous, 
because to-day the humour of Dickens has necessarily diminished 
in flavour like the grotesque wit of Cruikshank's drawings which 
illustrate it. De Morgan's laughter is infectious — not because 
he caricatures life, but because he presents life as it is with its 
familiar eccentricities, its inconsistencies, its bathos, its grandeur 
held up afresh for our inspection like homely objects in the 
added brightness of a mirror. 

' Dickens caricatures ; De Morgan characterizes,' pithily 
wrote another American author.^ Even if he describes the 
actions of a child, or the mov<!ments of a dog, he projects himself 
for the time being into the infantine or the canine mind with a 
success which is mirth-provoking. Words and phrases of his 
cling to remembrance from their absurdity — their aptness : the 
' tame-cat-ability ' of certain folk ; the resemblance of another 
character to * a fretful porcupine ' ; the opinion of little Dave in 
regard to Age and Experience that ' they never climb up posts 
without some safeguard of being able to come down again ' ; 
Lady Ancaster smiling in ' a well-bred way — a Debretticent way — 
call it ' ; or Aunt Izzy ' cherishing memories of people almost too 
well-connected to live ' ; or again some one of less refined instincts 
rejoicing blandly in an ' Alco-holiday.' The character of Chris- 
topher Vance, the vulgar but loveable father of Joe, is a crowning 
illustration of De Morgan's manner, not because it is fantastic, 
but because of its complete verisimilitude to the type it repre- 
sents ; just as the meal-times of the Heath family in Alice-for- 
Short provide a fund of entertainment produced solely out of 
the faithfulness of the picture. 

Moreover, unlike William Morris, and unlike Dickens, De 
Mcrgan does not preach the ' divine gospel of Discon- 
tent.' His affection for his fellows is equally all-embracing ; 
but the social chasms which exist he bridges over with love and 
not resentment. At times he is not altogether aware of the 
existence of the chasms. Admittedl}/', the plumber who comes 
to do your drains is not the man whom you will ultimately 
invite to j^our daughter's wedding, as happens in Joseph Vance, 
* F. Warren Seymour. 



270 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

more especially if his conversation is aggressively vulgar and 
he has a predisposition to get drunk. In real life Dr. Thorpe 
would have adopted Joe on condition that his father never 
came near the house ; and Joe, educated above his station, 
would have been hypersensitive to his father's failings. But 
De Morgan is unconscious of such a possibility. To him, the 
only recognizable snobbishness lies in a man aping that which 
he is not. Christopher, even in the tall hat which marks his 
advance in the social scale, is dehghtful to the last ; as Beppino, 
the decadent son of Dr. Thorpe, is unspeakably offensive. 
Further, it is worth remark that the same trait is prominent in 
the novel written by Mary De Morgan, wherein the heroine 
treats her charming maid as an equal, and kisses and confides 
in her with unhesitating affection. Both brother and sister, 
as authors, could, with an infinite delicacy of touch, make merry 
over the superficial vagaries of character, but neither ever left 
a reader in any doubt concerning the quality of the heart beneath. 

' There are, however, certain critics,' complained an American 
to De Morgan, ' who can never understand anything except by 
comparing it with something else they have known ' ; and to 
these De Morgan's likeness to or divergence from his literary 
prototype afforded a never-failing topic of discussion, in which 
he unhesitatingl}'- shared, but always with the humihty of a great 
reverence. ' Dickens was the Master at whose feet I sat ! ' he 
pronounced of himself ; and it was part of the simplicity of 
his character that where another man would have been annoyed 
at being called an imitator, he was proud of the imputation, 
but ready to dispute the conclusion swiftly arrived at by his 
reviewers that ' all such comparisons are absurd, for the dis- 
tinction, the individuality of Mr. De Morgan's writing is very 
much greater than its similarity to any other known author.' 

None the less, his suggested likeness to a writer of a later 
date caused him some perplexity. 

E. Nesbit to William De Morgan. 

' April 2jth, 1907. 
' My dear Sir, — 

' When first I read your Joseph Vance I wanted to vrrite and thank 
you for it. But I felt I had no right to bother you with my appreciation. 
Now, however, I have read tlie book eight -times, and though that gives 
me no more riglit, it does give me more excuse. 

' Joseph Vance is a great work of art in a certain genre unapproachcd 
by any hving author. Reviewers have said that your style is like that of 
Dickens. I think it is, in certain points. But he was always coming 
to grief from lack of taste — and you never do. Also he forced, often and 
far too often, flowers which grow so naturally and beautifully in your 
garden. The one author whom you really resemble — and no one else 
has ever come near to resembling him — is Henry Ivingsley. And you 
seem to me to beat him at his own game. 

' Your book is a beautiful book, mse and witty and tender. 1 believe 



THE MAN AND THE METHOD 271 

it will be living and beloved when most of our present-day novelists are 
dust and their works have perished with them. 

' I have written a good many books myself, and I can understand and 
honour the long patience, the ungrudged toil, the steadfast purpose that 
you have given to the making of this book. It is as a journeyman in the 
Guild wherein you are a Master, and as a human being who loves the 
human beings you have made, that I have found myself unable any 
longer to keep from thanking you.' 

' I am puzzled about Kingsley,' De Morgan wrote in reference 
to this letter. ' I admire him, but don't feel in the least like 
him. Whereas I am so conscious of my own rapport with 
Dickens, that whatever I write (in his hunting grounds) I have 
to think all through his works to make sure it isn't simple plunder ! 
All through — honour bright ! ' 

It is interesting, therefore, to hear from De Morgan's own 
pen his opinion of his two great predecessors in fiction. 

When the hundredth anniversary of Thackeray's birth was 
celebrated, one of the points on which it was wished to get a 
consensus of the opinions of noted men was the time-honoured 
question : Was Thackeray a cynic ? De Morgan expressed 
himself as follows : — 

' The youth who was asked for his definition of a rhomboid replied — 
" That depends on what you call a x'homboid." 

' In reply to the question your letter asks me, I can only say that it 
depends on what you call a cynic, whether Thackeray deserved that name 
or not. 

' I gather from the nearest book of reference that I can lay hands on 
at this moment that the Cynics " neglected the conveniences of life,'" and 
ultimately " became so disgusting from their impudence, dirty habits, and 
begging, that they ceased to be regarded with any respect.'" 

' I have therefore every reason to believe, although I had not the 
good fortune to know him, that William Makepeace Thackeray was not, 
historically speaking, a Cynic. 

' The non -historical definition seems to be " an ill-natured person 
who says bitter things." But the bitterest things are always said — at 
least such is my experience — by the most tender-hearted people. If my 
belief is right, Thackeray has still a chance of being called a cynic rightly. 

' I do not think it important to decide whether he was, or was not, a 
cynic. I wish more cynics were Thackerays.' 

When the Dickens Centenary was celebrated the next year, 
De Morgan, who had been recently termed ' the Twentieth 
Century Dickens,' was asked by the Dickens Society to contri- 
bute any recollections of the novelist whose memory they wished 
to commemorate. ' I make no protest about the " Twentieth 
Century Dickens ! ' ' he wrote in an aside to Heinemann. ' It's 
rather rough on the century, though ! What sort of a Dickens 
will the Centuries have when they come of age, at this rate ? ' 
But among his papers are the following pencilled jottings : — 

' 127 Church Street. 
' (i) Unhappily I have no personal recollections — I wish it were 
otherwise. 



273 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

' (2) In ray opinion I owe to Dickens everything that a pupil can owe 
to a master — to the head master. Whether I have succeeded in rising 
above mere imitation I can't say — I must leave the point to my readers. 
My own memory of Charles Dickens is simply one of unmixed gratitude 
and plenary acknowledgment of obligation. 

' (3) It is impossible to assign a value to any works without a standard 
of comparison. In the case of the two great novelists of last century, 
Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray, there is no such unit 
among English writers, except Shakespeare. To make such a comparison 
would be presumptuous, unless one had given to it the study of a lifetime. 

' (4) Humour always appeals most to its own age — keeping this in 
view, I should say Dickens's humour showed an exceptional vitality. I 
meet people now and then who deny it, but have found their own samples 
of humour, produced at request, the reverse of exhilarating. 

' (5) I think there can be no doubt which is his greatest book. But 
autobiographic parallel is such a powerful engine in fiction that it is 
scarcely fair to place his other works in competition with it. Conceive 
the difficulties of writing the Tale of Two Cities as against David Copper- 
field: 

In one point De Morgan differentiated between the work of 
Dickens and that of Thackeray. He thought that Thackeray 
was incHned to repeat a type he had once successfully created, 
whereas Dickens always had a freshly individualized character 
for even a single appearance. There is, however, in De Morgan's 
own writing one element which is absent from the works of both 
the earlier novelists. They, of their very period, were forced 
to eschew what their successor terms ' orthodoubt.' De Morgan, 
on the contrary, does not deal merely with this world in his 
analysis of humanity ; he links the actual and the possible in 
one consecutive romance, and probes into the wherefore of Life 
with a happy mingling of science and philosophy. His meta- 
physical speculations on the whence and whither of the human 
ego have a value beyond that of the mere ingenious teUing of a 
tale. Few that had once read it, lightly forgot the conversation 
at Poplar Villa on the Ghost in the Corpse, based on the lines : — 

' Body and Spirit are twins — God only knows which is which. 
The Soul squats down in the flesh like a tinker drunk in a ditch.' 

And Dr. Thorpe's quaint summing up of the position : — 

' There are two distinct classes of people in the world : those that feel 
they are themselves in a body ; and those that feel they themselves are 
a body, with something worldng it. I feci like the contents of a botlle, 
and am very curious to know what will happen when the bottle is un- 
corked. . . . You never told us which you feel like — the contents of the 
bottle, or the bottle itself ? ' 

And again : — 

' " Do you see your way, Thorpe [Professor Absalom asks] to any 
conclusions about the hereafter itself ? Anything that throws light on 
what and where the Ghost is when its Corpse is insolvent, and in liquida- 
tion, with all the Capital withdrawn ? Because that's the Crux ! " 

' " That's the Crux, of course [Dr. Thorpe replies]. But beyond the 
physical feehng I have spoken of — little but speculation. The tendency 




'Persian" vase, egg-shaped, painted in colours on a turquoise-blue ground with 

growing flowers. 
Height QVs inches. Diameter 5% inches. 



THE MAN AND THE METHOD 273 

of it has been towards attaching weight to inferences to be drawn from 
what we know of tlie Spirit in the Flesh, the Ghost in the Corpse, rather 
than to those that follow from what are supposed to be communications 
from the other side. Some of these may be true, or may not. I have 
always felt on quicksands when I have been tempted to go to Bogy 
stances, as Janey calls them. The authentic story of one day is the 
hoax of the next. But what we can see in the strange phenomena other 
people is safe to go upon " ' 

And after dwelling on the problem of the development, or 
of the stunted growth, of the Spirit observable in the human 
units with whom he is surrounded, he draws a comparison between 
the unborn child on the one hand and the unborn, or undeveloped 
soul, on the other. 

' " Who shall say that the unborn child in its degree does not learn 
as much of this world as we succeed in learning of the next ? The physio- 
logist is satisfied that the unborn child knows nothing and can receive no 
impressions, but then the physiologist is satisfied also that he himself is 
what your young friend, Joe — you remember — called ... a wunner at 
knowing things, and I suspect for my part that he knows just as little of 
what he doesn't know at all as he did before he was born. In fact, the 
soul during gestation has only a pro-rata anticipation of what is before 
it. Of course, the comparison suggests all sorts of parallels, some of them 
uncomfortable ones." 

' " For instance, Thorpe ? " 

' " Well — for instance — what is the soul-parallel of the child that 
dies unborn ? " 

' " The death of the Ghost in the Corpse," we all spoke simultaneously. 

' " Exactly. Do you find the notion comfortable ? I don't. But I 
do derive a good deal of satisfaction from its opposite — the maturity of 
the Ghost in the Corpse. ... It is the keynote of my philosophy in this 
matter. The sacramental word growth. If I am right, a long life to 
him is the best wish we can offer any man. At any rate, he has the 
opportunity of growing up, though of course he may avail himself of 
equal opportunities of growing down or sideways — developing as a mon- 
strosity, in fact !"...' 

And again he enlarged upon this theme : — 

' . . . I busy myself keeping a close eye on the queerest of Phenomena, 
Somebody Else ; and what I see tends to confirm rather than unsettle my 
ideas. Ever since I began to look at this Phenomenon from my new point 
of view, I fancy I have got more and more able to discriminate and classify 
him — he almost always presents himself to me now as a growing, decreasing, 
or stationary Ghost. The last class is the largest, and the first the smallest. 
Sometimes I am able to accovmt for a nice child turning out a nasty man 
by supposing that his Ghost is still a baby, and has no control over his 
Corpse. Sometimes I am confronted with an instance of an attractive 
old age following a detestable youth. I can only surmise that it is due to 
maturing of the contents of the bottle. 

' " You are not always as mad as you seem, Thorpe," said Professor 
Absalom. " I discern redeeming features in your present aberration. 
In fact, I should say that the idea of growth being the greatest good is the 
Qatural correlative of my old notion that frustration is the greatest evil." 

It is, however, doing an injustice to conclusions often as 
fascinating as they are subtle to quote from them extracts without 

s 



274 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

the context and so leave the argument faulty, because incomplete. 
But still more characteristic, perhaps, is another mention by 
De Morgan of his views on a future life : — 

' His confidence in a hereafter [he says of one of his characters] 
was so strong that it often bubbled up hke this and could not be kept 
down. . . . After all, it's a question of one's sense of humour. If I were 
to catch myself non-existing after death, I should simply die of laughter. 
It would really be too absurd if the thing that did the knowing stopped 
and the known was left entirely to its own devices ! ' 

Yet De Morgan did not cherish a belief in the immortality 
of the individual ego from the standpoint that, this world being 
pre-eminently unsatisfactory involves, in common justice, the 
existence of a future Elysium as an antidote. When a con- 
versation to this effect took place in his presence, he remarked 
inconsequently — ' I don't know that I want a future life — I 
have been very contented.' 

' But of course you do ! ' exclaimed his wife vehemently. 
' Otherwise everything would be so meaningless ! ' 

A third person thereupon pointed out that they both shared 
the fallacy common to all disputants on this subject—a con- 
viction that the ruling of an inexorable Destiny was determined 
by their individual wishes ! 

In all De Morgan's speculations, however, concerning the 
whence and whither of the human ego — utterances which come 
now, alas ! like a voice from beyond the grave — one is reminded 
of Browning's verdict : — 

' The soul doubtless is immortal — where a soul can be discerned ! ' 

And in this connexion we find him writing to a friend : 
' I never thought when I was young that any writer could be so 
precious to me (apart from all his other greatnesses) as an apostle 
of immortality as Browning— perhaps I ought to say the apostle 
of immortality — because all the others (modern) twitter and 
are half-hearted.' Yet he concedes that ' a certain amount of 
nervousness about Eternity is inseparable from our want of 
authentic information ' ; and once he refers with a note of envy 
to ' that entirely self-satisfied thing — a non-Entity ! ' 

An inconvenient habit which he developed after he had taken 
to authorship was to jot down at random on any blank paper 
handy the stray thoughts which drifted through his active brain. 
This had obvious disadvantages, for, just as a portion of Joseph 
Vance had been scribbled in the washing-book, so his wife, one 
day on examining the butcher's book, discovered a crucial 
problem therein dealt with in a pencilling by her husband : — 

' John has a Soul — upon the whole 
The tombstone's wrong that says " Hie Jacet " ; 
But if John really has a Soul 
What sort of thing is John who has it ? ' 



THE MAN AND THE METHOD 275 

None the less, when Death approached De Morgan's own 
citadel he met the severance which it wrought with the unflinching 
bravery yet profound humility of a mind which, while it accepts 
a great Hope, refuses to confound this with the certainty so easy 
of attainment to a more limited intelligence. It was perhaps 
doubly cruel, in the first fl"sh of his literary success and his 
pleased recognition that fame had at last come to gild life with 
a new meaning for him, that news should reach him of the unex- 
pected death of his sister Mary, leaving him thus the sole survivor 
of that once brilliant, vivacious home-circle each member of 
which had received his or her quietus in the fulness of life. Yet, 
even so, the theme of the Waldstein Sonata— that echo of his 
far-away youth — still drifted down the years and whispered 
its message to him that Death is not a terminus but a portal. 

William De Morgan to Lady Biirne-Jones and Mrs. Mackail. 
' (Levanto — but write to London Address) 

' 29- 5- 07- 
' My dear Georgie and Margot, — 

' Your letters were a pleasure to me to receive — made me grateful 
to you for wanting to say that, and to your Maker for making you able 
to say it so well. 

' I had a letter too, and a very, very nice one from dear old Phil.* 
He and Mary always pulled well together in old times. I must write to 
Phil to renew my loss of touch with him. I have let slip so much through 
this Italian sequestration. 

' Yes — this loss has been a shell into my citadel and all the garrison, 
my faculties, are busy preventing the fire extending to the magazine. 

' This line is really just to give you the substance of what I have 
heard of the end of things in Egypt. She was in March badly ill with 
some enteric malady, and a complication. She wrote to me of thi?, but 
said she had been cured by a native remedy compiled by an Arab cook 
and a Nubian prison warder. I felt no added uneasiness because of this. 
Later, her friend, Mrs. Elgood, who has been angehc to her, and who 
\\'Tites me all I know, found her seriously ill at Helouan — (but always, 
she says, attended by a doctor of repute) ; and had her moved to the 
German hospital in Cairo. The only scrap of satisfaction I can get from 
Mrs. E.'s letter, which I will show you when I come, is that when she said 
that I v/as coming, Mary was able to understand. Had there been a boat 
going wdthin 36 hours, I should have been on my way. 

' Well ! I am quite reacly for either Extinction or Extension, whichever 
and whenever. Only if the latter, all I stipulate for is absolute good, on 
the terms that the Mastrr shall manage it, and that we shall all be safe- 
guarded against the rack of this tough world. Goodbye, my dears I 
Love to the infants that read her stories — the other day ! 

' Your affte, 

' Wm. De Morgan.' 

And once, at a later date, he wrote : ' The Grave shall not 
be vilipended. To the perfectly healthy mind (mine) it appeals 
,with a double suggestion — the satisfaction of one's unbounded 
curiosity about what next, and the alternative of honest extinction 
—a great luxury looked at rightly.' 

* Sir Philip Burne-Jones, Bt. 



CHAPTER XII 

' ALICE ' AND ' SALLY ' 

1907-1908 

' TT is so strange,' De Morgan wrote in 1907, ' to sit here in 
X Florence and look out at the Duomo and St, Lorenzo, 
and then go back to " washing chintz on the Wandle ! " When 
I saw that place first in '81 it was all arranged that I should 
make tiles and pots there. Now the tiles and pots have van- 
ished like a dream— a very insolvent dream ! — and I have turned 
turtle and am afloat on a sea of Literature. Which is rumness, 
ain't it ? as the pot-boy said at the Fellowship Porter's.' 

' I have seen nothing of the ex-factory,' he wrote sadly, none 
the less, ' and all the paraphernalia of the old processes are 
packed away in the garden here. Will they ever be brought out 
again, I wonder ? ' But Lady Burne- Jones wrote to him with- 
out regret : ' There is something infinitely comfortable in the 
idea of all the men and the furnaces and the " works " generally 
that stood between you and the world having vanished, and just 
your Self is left speaking exactly as you wish, by means of a 
bottle of ink, a pen and a sheet of paper.' 

Before his second book made its appearance De Morgan 
wrote to Mr. Vance : — 

' I have told Heinemann to post you a copy of my forth- 
comer as soon as it forthcomes. Alice-for-Short is the title, with 
the sub-title A Dichronism, which I hope will explain itself to 
whoever succeeds in wading through 530 mortal pages of print. 
It is an odd attempt to weave events over a century apart into 
consecutive narrative, by means of cataleptics and ghosts, and 
sich hke. 

' Your namesake had had a fair circulation in England up to 
Christmas. Whether he has died out since then I know not, and 
shall hardly dare to ask Heinemann when I get back, for fear of 
a long face of disappointment. The effect of Alice on Joe may 
be good. 

' I feel, in reading a story like your last, what a terrible 
drawback to enjoying it properly my ignorance of all things 
modern is. Motor-cars are a terra incognita to me, unless 
indeed one speUs " terra " terror. They are that, for they liave 

276 



•ALICE' AND 'SALLY' 277 

frightened me and my humble bicycle off the road. Wliile as 
for telephones, I can't talk through them when I try. And I shut 
my eyes tight, which is needless, and shout and gasp and don't 
believe I'm speaking to the right person. Nor am I, sometimes. 
Last time I tried 'phoning I was told it was twins, and her lady- 
ship was doing well ! The fact is, I wasn't born to be contem- 
porary, at this current epoch. The old Italian town we stayed 
a week at on the way to Genoa is my sort — even water carried 
on pack-mules — no wheels known, hardly ! 

' I shall hope that we may meet in London ; it will be a 
curious experience to me (as perhaps to you) to correct epistolary 
impressions from autopsy.' 

Later Mr. Vance wrote sending a portrait and character- 
sketch of his ancestor. Governor Joseph Vance, ' who, if I am 
not mistaken, was a sort of a contemporary of your Joseph 
Vance — who wasn't, but is ! ' De Morgan replied : — 

' The interesting document has just come and given me a 
feeling traceably like that of hearing of a new connexion or 
relation ! 

' Governor Vance must have been a fine old boy, and when 
we are all ancient history will make a part of one of its most 
interesting stories — for certainly the merging of the Georgian 
(even Jacobean and Elizabethan) bygones in the new life of the 
new land will have a Thermopylae-and-Marathon interest for our 
remote successors — if any survive the next new inventions and 
discoveries ! 

' Here is a funny thought that crossed my mind as I looked 
at the old gentleman's portrait. If, when I was just born in '39, 
anyone had tried to invent an improbable way in which I should 
develop a sort of link with the last Governor of Ohio (then 
resting, I suppose, after official life), could he have hit upon 
anything more improbable than the actual about-to-be, viz, : 
that I should live 63 mortal years (just the old boy's life at that 
date) and then use his name for a novel, and that my knowledge 
of him should come to me because his great-grand-nephew 
Joseph would he novel-writing too ? 

' Anyhow, if he did hit upon the truth, and prophesy right, 
he would have been careful to add that the opinion of the great- 
grand-nephew about the publications of that there baby would 
give the person he was going to grow to very great pleasure, and 
that he thanked him con amore. I am indeed glad you and Mrs. 
Vance are so pleased with No. 2. I hope we shan't have a 
collapse over our nexts, either of us — come down like rocket sticks ! 

' I am very glad indeed to hear that you are concentrating 
on a book less aimed at the railway reader — and his love-im- 
patient public. As in the Fine Arts, the world is all confused 
and sweating with its own scramble up-to-date. We want a lull 



278 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

in a quiet corner, to recapitulate and look round — a pause for 
refreshment. 

' I hope a regular good unmistakable success of Terence and 
the Private War will supply you with a happy oasis, in which 
you may indulge a studied disregard of everything but your own 
bias and wishes, and ignore compression to 100,000 words, which 
is the true writer's cramp. Where would David Copperfield and 
Vanity Fair have been under such limitation ? I would not 
lose a word of either — not one word ! ' 

To his cousin. Miss Seeley, he wrote : — 

• Vale. 

•►^l August, 1907. 
' My dear Fanny, — 

' I do call that real good cousinship to write me a letter at full 
lengih about Alice. That is what the human author — and, like Miss 
Lavinia,* I am too well aware that I am merely human — thoroughly 
likes. By this time I am thinking of the people in those two books as 
people I once knew, but had no hand in the fabrication of. 

* I'm bound to say I think Joe Vance the better book all round. But 
this goes against the popular verdict — witness the sales ! In some eight 
weeks Alice has sold some 5,000 against Joe's 4,000 in a twelvemonth. 

' It's very funny how people want more of that detestable Straker girl. 
Perhaps they don't really know how odious she was. I do, you see ! 
But one or two criticisms took it quite en grippe that I had not told more 
about her. I assure you, Charles never really knew how bad she was — 
fact ! 

' I'm happy to say that the last pages — after " Finis " — have been 
supposed to be bona fide by one critic certainly — perhaps more — / think 
it the best thing in the book. 

' Your affect : cousin, 

' \Vm. De Morgan.' 

The great incentive, however, to his new work still remained 
the belief that it might enable him to renew the old. ' It may 
be,' he wrote to Mr. Vance, ' that in the next few years my pen 
may supply what Millionaires have not, and the Pottery be 
vitalized again. That is the hope I live in.' Only gradually did 
this vision fade ; only slowly did he understand that he 
had reached ' the last of life for which the first was made.' 
When his sudden change of profession was referred to he 
remarked meditatively : ' Well, my life has always been the 
oddest of odd stories, and this part of it is the oddest story of all ! ' 

For long, indeed, he refused to credit the stability of his 
literary success ; and he regarded the advent of his second novel 
with special anxiety. While waiting for its publication he wrote 
nervously to Heinemann : ' I want my reviews to stick in an 
egotism-nourishing book, to gratify my vanity with at odd 
moments. It will be so nice to prove, when the book has failed, 
that it was only the stupidity of the many-headed ! Vol. Two 

* Lavinia Straker in Alice-for-Short, an adventuress who became the 
first wife of Charles Heath. 



'ALICE' AND 'SALLY' 279 

must always be a critical one for an author. For one thing it 
must always be more critically handled by the Press. I shall 
never again feel as I am bound to do now — as if I were being 
slapped on the back by Briareus, the hundred-handed ! ' 

He was somewhat reassured when his unknown correspon- 
dents wrote to him from America having re-christened the book 
Alice-for-Ever. But he already experienced keenly what many 
an author feels, that never again after his first book can he write 
with the same complete sincerity and absence of self-conscious- 
ness which characterized that unstudied outpouring of the pent- 
up dreams and convictions of years. Despite the surprise and 
satisfaction with which he regarded the eulogistic reviews, he 
recognized that there lurked in them a danger, as also in the 
well-intentioned but persistent criticism of friends. For all out- 
side interference with inspiration has a tendency to confuse the 
clearness of an author's vision, to engender mistrust of his own 
intuition ; hence it is a question whether the uses of criticism 
counterbalance its abuses. 

' It is for this reason,' he remarked once, ' that Joseph may 
be superior to his brethren ! A first book is so often in a different 
category to anything which an author produces subsequently. 
Later works may be an advance in construction, as they will 
certainly be more in conformity with accepted standards ; but 
something will have gone from them, never to be regained, of 
the freshness, the artlessness of expression which may be akin 
to genius.' For so it is that the author who writes \\dth his 
thoughts divided between his pen and his critic may hit the 
ephemeral fashion of the moment, but his influence will be 
as brief as the labour which it involved. As in Art, so in litera- 
ture, only what is produced with the heart's blood will take 
root in other hearts. 

Later he remarked : ' I am quite right in accounting Joseph 
Vance my best work, and I am convinced it will remain so. 
The conditions under which it was written can never recur. I 
am encumbered now not only with my rapports with criticism, 
but— even more — by the constant question : ' Have I, or have 
I not, written all this before ? My memory of what I have 
written is unsound, and it does not do for a writer to repeat 
himself.' But in regard to this fear that he should uncon- 
sciously duplicate remarks or experiences in his different novels, 
he once observed brightly : ' Now I know why people will say 
that I repeat myself. The lending library has just supplied a 
friend with a cop}^ of my last book in which the pages i to 40 
are followed by another i to 40 ! Q.E.D. ' 

He, however, never believed in re-writing or polishing any- 
thing that he felt actually expressed what he wished to express. 
Sincerity was everything ; style was too often an affectation 



28o WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

which marred spontaneity. ' Never alter anything to please 
anyone else,' he wrote once emphatically to the present writer ; 
' it is playing fast and loose with Retribution ! Nothing is ever 
gained by worrying phraseology. Say just what you feel, just 
as you feel it ; and stick to it ! ' He even refused to be per- 
turbed when a literal-minded gentleman bombarded him with 
correspondence to prove that he had been guilty of a gross 
blunder. ' You who pretend to write Literature, you who 
are looked upon as one of our great novelists,' this critic com- 
plained, ' you have actually said that cows " appear to have 
time 071 their hands ! " and cows have no hands ! ' 'I am greatly 
indebted to you,' wrote back De Morgan gravely, ' for drawing 
my attention to a useful fact in Natural History, in which I am 
deplorably ignorant.' 

But the persistent, and to him grievous, trouble which he 
encountered was the necessity for the compression of a long 
narrative into one volume. ' I am quite willing to admit that 
my method is all wrong,' he wrote humbly once, when urged to 
write shorter books, ' but I am convinced that nothing will be 
gained, and much lost, by forcing it into a channel unnatural 
to it.' Had he written in the days to which he rightfully be- 
longed, when a three-volume novel was the vogue, this trouble 
would not have existed ; as it was, he was eternally distracted 
by petitions from his readers that he would insist on Mr. Heine- 
mann publishing his books in larger type, and petitions from Mr. 
Heinemann that, to make this possible, he should abbreviate his 
work in a manner which he felt would confuse the issues in his 
own mind and wreck it from an artistic standpoint. 

' I am strongly of opinion,' he wrote to Heinemann, ' that 
most modern literature would gain by judicious condensation 
and expansion. But my experience is that the latter is the best 
remedy for dragging. Nothing is so good as judicious insertion ! 
If only that injudicious blue pencil could draw together and heal 
up the gap it leaves so as not to upset the apple-cart in the next 
Chapter, no one would welcome it more than I. But the author 
has to re-read and correct all the rest of his book at every ex- 
cision ; and nobody else can ever read his MS. with an impartial 
eye to help him, because the critic sees the pencil-mark and is 
biased.' 

On one occasion Heinemann sent a manuscript back to him 
with an earnest petition that he would condense it. De Morgan 
set to work conscientiously to comply with this request ; but 
as he re-read the story, it seemed to him that it lacked little 
touches here and there to perfect it, and he worked away happily 
adding these in till he found that, instead of shortening the book, 
he had increased the original length by four hundred pages with 
material which now seemed too essential to be omitted. * But 



'ALICE' AND 'SALLY* 281 

after all,' he wrote soothingly to Heinemann, ' try to feel it's 
only like your publishing two books at once ! ' 

Another time, when Mr. Lawrence likewise urged the advis- 
ability of compression, De Morgan pointed out that it would be 
infinitely less trouble to himself to start afresh and write an 
entirely new book, than to maul the completed manuscript. ' I 
have usually found,' he complained, ' that three lines taken out 
in one place have let me in for six inserted elsewhere to make a 
passage intelligible ' ; and he adds : — 

' It seems to me that my books are giving a deal of trouble ! But 
this Solomon is not only good-tempered — but really grateful for plain, 
straightforward criticism. It can't be too clear and direct because then 
it franks him in directness of yea and nay. 

' As to mere cutting out of paragraphs, all I can say is, try one ! Don't 
blue-pencil the place and leave the author to heal the gap up — have the 
two ends re-typed in context, with proper commas and things. 

' I let a friend loose once on Chapter I of Joe Vance with a blue pencil, 
and asked for the phrases to be read aloud as amended — I declined to 
help — and no conclusion was come to 1 

' I could show you four pages of Alice-for-Short that wavered under 
the blue-pencil because they " dragged," and were afterwards reprinted 
en bloc with special eulogy in Public Opinion ! Shows how hard it is for 
an author to judge. 

' But I can't decline to help this time, or be the least cantankerous — 
only / must be convinced — I can't cut out anything I think juicy. Much 
sooner start on a new one ! ' ^ 

' I have always been greatly struck by the essayist in De 

^ To readers of Alice-for-Short it may be of interest to know exactly 
what he eliminated in that novel. To Heinemann he wrote : — 

' I have done my best with A lice-for-Short. It is most difficult to make 
any substantial reduction in bulk without sacrificing some feature in the 
story. No doubt it would be possible to tell the same tale without the 
Ghosts being Alice's ancestors, or to introduce Margaret and Dr. Johnson 
as a married couple without saying how they became so. I dare say fifty 
pages might be won by either of these expedients and three months re- 
casting. 25ut I don't think either comes into practical politics. 

' What I have actually sacrificed is as follows : 

' (i) The chapter at the end. Its substance, cut down, has been added 
to Chapter 23, Vol. 2. 

' (2) The bulk of the legal discussion, retaining little beyond the will. 

' (3) All I could spare of the Heath household's meal-times, and the 
opposition of his relatives to Charles's marriage. 

' (4) Mtich psychical Research, and 3,000 or 4,000 words of miscel- 
laneous excision. 

' With regard to what I have added it amounts to, say, twenty pages 
of Joseph Vance print, and fills out a grievous hiatus in the story. On 
reading straight through the whole aloud to my wife, both of us were 
disgusted at the way Charles's meeting with Alice after the small-pox was 
ignored. The tale jumped on from the picnic at Shellacombe to the 
Bedlam epoch leaving poor Alice in the hospital. It was too unkind. 
However, I have made it all warm and comfortable now by adding the 
short chapter which is Chapter XXXIV of one Vol. It would not do to 
omit it. The discontinuity was too painful.' 



iL 



282 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

Morgan's novels,' wrote Mr. Shaw Sparrow. ' Narrative is con- 
stantly being delayed by the essayist, who is a chatty, charming, 
humorous and witty observer, with a marvellous eye for the 
detail that counts. Critics when impatient with the length of 
his books invariably forget the essayist, as though story-writing 
alone interested them. If the essays in De Morgan were col- 
lected I think that Charles Lamb would have a rival.' 

The hackneyed criticism that he was too prolix was, however, 
occasionally met by De Morgan with a gentle effrontery. ' Well,' 
he observed, after reading a passage to this effect, ' I stopped 
reading for forty years, and now that I have taken to writing, 
I find other people's books so long ! ' 

When Heinemann urged him to write some personal reminis- 
cences in order to gratify the curiosity of his insatiable readers, 
he replied : ' The matter is settled for me by the fact that my 
undertakings have overtaken me, and I mustn't add to them ; 
but I hope I shall not seem an intransigeant person if I say at 
once Reminiscences would be out of the question. Too many 
people are still living — I should be in hot water in no time — and 
I'm not cut out for that sort of work. I find I live in a cold 
perspiration as it is whenever I come to London. And whatever 
chance there is of screwing another Joe or Alice out of this 
fatigued and disordered brain would be gone for good ! My 
proper business is to use my residuum of invention on what my 
friends who have read Joe and Alice are asking for — viz., more 
of the same sort. There won't be a-many years at the most 
to employ it on.' 

' I have in vain besought my reviewers,' he wrote on another 
occasion, ' to invent whatever they like about me, but not to 
bother me with data. Winged words of this sort need not have 
the solemnity of law documents. What earthly use is a sub- 
stratum of fact ? It's of no use, for instance, my correcting the 
story that the MS. of Joseph Vance was typed after a publisher 
rejected it, and that another publisher took it in consequence of 
my typist weeping over it ! In point of fact, I never trust a 
MS. out of my hand till it exists in duplicate.' To a friend who 
succeeded in interviewing him, he wrote : — 

' I know you will excuse my saying candidly that I object unappeasedly 
to the interview form ? . . . However, I have no objection to the publica- 
tion of what you have written if it is distinctly understood not to contain 
a single correction of my own writing. ... I understand tlie rule of the 
game in Press-notices of this sort to be that they need be accurate only 
in an Impressionist sense. This is rather like Rlrs. Wilfer"s celebrated 
reservation. When she used the word attractive she did it " with this 
reservation, that I meant it in no sense whatever." 

As he drifted into a settled routine of work, he kept to the 
hours which, throughout his life, he had been used to devote 
to art. He thus wrote from dawn to dusk, and sometimes 



'ALICE' AND 'SALLY' 283 

occasionally in the evening. ' I am very stay-at-home-ative ! ' 
he explained in consequence. His own impression was that he 
wrote very slowly ; but, judging by the result, this could not 
have been the case. Interruptions never fretted him. When 
these occurred, however inopportunely, he laid his pen aside 
with unruffled amiability, and later resumed the broken train of 
thought without effort. ' I find that the mere holding of a pen 
makes me think,' he said. * The pen even seems to have some 
consciousness of its own ! It can certainly begin the work. Then 
I forget all about it, and go on wheresoever thought or the char- 
acters lead me. I think I work best in Florence, where it is 
always quiet, and where there is something stimulating in the 
air. Yet weather does not affect me, as all my work is indoors.' 
His handwriting was very legible and his manuscripts, in con- 
sonance with his disbelief in revision, show few corrections, save, 
here and there, excisions of entire paragraphs. 

Mr. Bram Stoker, after a visit to the Vale, relates, ' Mr. De 
Morgan is extremely reticent — indeed almost shy — in speaking 
of himself or his work. . , . He is the most modest of men. It 
was only in answer to direct queries that he would unfold any- 
thing of himself or his memories. But he is a most kindly and 
genial man, of a very sweet and S5nnpathetic nature— as indeed 
any reader of that work can discern. As we chatted in his little 
study looking out into the garden — large for a house so near the 
heart of London — his natural diffidence wore away and he 
revealed himself. New light came into his mind from old 
memories, illuminating thoughts expressed themselves in an 
atmosphere of colour — natural to a man who had spent some 
forty years as a worker in picturesque designing and manufac- 
ture. 

' " 1 had a great struggle," De Morgan explained, " to get Joseph 
Vance coherent at the end. I really thought at one time that 
I had got into a muddle from which there could be no extrica- 
tion. Happily that was not so with Alice-for-Short. In that 
case all went through very easily." ' 

' I suppose,' Mr. Stoker suggested, ' that the power of plot- 
making develops with exercise and experience ? ' 

He smiled as he replied, ' That is so — as far as my experience 
carries me. In my first book that branch of the art of novel- 
writing was wrought by the sweat of my brow. I had to think 
of everything, foresee everything — as far as I could. But even 
then there were a sad lot of loose ends and ragged edges ; all 
of which had to be carefully laboured over till some sort of unity 
of idea of the whole thing was achieved, in so far as it was in me 
to do it. When I began Alice-for-Short I found the value of all 
this labour. Things began somehow to settle themselves, and 
to fall into line in a natural way. It seemed to me as if the 



284 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

mechanical power of one's mind was getting adjusted to its new 
work. After all, a great deal of this part of the work is scientific 
— logic based on mathematics. And a good deal of my early 
life was spent in these studies. I inherited perhaps some of the 
faculty, or at least I should have, for I come from a mathematical 
and logical family.' 

Mr. Bram Stoker proceeded to question him about his char- 
acter-creation. ' Do your characters come from your brain fully 
fledged, like Minerva, or do they grow from small beginnings 
and become more and more real as the story progresses ? ' 

' The latter altogether. So far as I can remember — for it is 
hard to recollect the exact beginnings of characters — the pro- 
cess is a sort of nebulous idea with a concrete heart somewhere 
in the midst. A heart which can from the first illuminate in 
some degree, and which can beat in time, and grow more and 
more and more vital till at the last it emerges from the mist. 
And then, strangely enough, you are not astonished when you 
find that the creature which has newly declared itself is a friend 
of your lifetime — of your dreams. When this point is reached 
the characters often act, and even speak, for themselves. At 
times it seems as if one can almost hear their very words.' 

' Do they ever,' Mr. Stoker asked, ' get away from you at 
this stage ; do they ever take, so to speak, the bit in their teeth 
and bolt ? ' 

' I wouldn't undertake to say that they don't ; and I must 
say that I don't object when they do. For this often leads to 
a new line of thought. It seems to me often that it is such 
divergencies that make for the freshness of a story. After all, 
if the characters are true to nature, with just that soupgon of 
individuality — even if it is eccentric — which makes people in- 
teresting in real life, such can have a charm of their own in 
literature. And if these imaginary characters have fictional life 
why should they not use it fictionally — in their own way. We 
talk now and again of fictional characters as " living." Surely 
it is this quality, if any, which makes them so.' 

Thus, as De Morgan wrote, he did not attempt to create a 
plot, nor had he any idea when he was writing one page what 
the next would be. ' My ideas of what will happen,' he ex- 
plained, ' are only distinct by accident, occasionally.' He 
believed absolutely in the reality of his puppets, and he waited 
with a complete sense of impotence to see what they would do 
next. ' How is the story going ? ' his wife would ask him when 
he came down to luncheon. ' I am rather distressed, I am so 
afraid they are going to quarrel,' he would answer sometimes ; 
and later in the day when she asked again, he would perhaps 
reply happily, ' After all, I don't know if they will come to a 
quarrel — I must wait to see what they will do.' Only rarely did 




Dish, saucer-shaped, painted in ruby and yellow lustre with an antelope standing 

in front of an apple tree ; below are two fishes. 

Diameter 14% inches. 

[At the Victoria & AVocrt Museum, Loudon 



•ALICE' AND 'SALLY' 285 

he become worried when the plot would not reveal itself. For 
instance, when he was writing Alice-for-Short, he was asked one 
day how he was getting on. ' Not at all,' he responded plain- 
tively, ' the heroine has been hanging over a precipice for three 
days, and I don't know what on earth she will decide to do next ! ' 
In all matters he followed the trend of his inspiration blindly, 
and only subsequently tried to ascertain if his fiction was in 
accordance with fact. Such investigation appealed to his innate 
love of analysis, and doctors, lawyers, scientists were, in turn, 
eagerly consulted by him on technical points, with the result 
that he invariably proved the accuracy of what he had described 
in complete ignorance. For instance, having related how Jane 
Verrinder, on resuming consciousness, took up the threads of life 
from the precise juncture at which she had laid them down — 
even to continuing the remarks which she had been about to 
make when her accident occurred — he was much interested in 
the following letter from a famous authority on lunacy : — 

Sir James Crichion- Browne, M.D., F.R.S., to William De Morgan. 

' Dumfries, N.B. 

' Prolonged trance and subliminal periods of existence have often 
been employed in fiction, generally, I think, in a way that does not com- 
mend itself to the medical mind. The truth is, such matter is often more 
wonderful than anything that imagination has conceived. Had I time 
I could send you some curious cases of trance dug out of old medical and 
surgical literature. I suppose you have heard of Astley Cooper's case in 
which a naval officer who suffered a depression of the skull from a grape- 
shot in an action in the Mediterranean at the moment when he was issuing 
an order remained totally unconscious for many months, in which state 
he was brought home, and who,|when operated on in London and the 
depressed bone being raised, completed the order he had been uttering 
when he was struck down many months before. He took up his con- 
scious life at the exact moment when it had been interrupted. 

' I remember making an interesting visit to Bethlem many years 
ago with the late Miss Lungard, an actress of great ability, to enable her 
to study a particular form of insanit3^ Melancholia, which she portrayed 
in Called Back, a successful play founded on a successful novel. The 
public fancied it was unnatural, but it was really a wonderful study of a 
special form of mental aberration ! ' 

In short, while writing, De Morgan was like a man groping 
in the dark and trying to discover how people of whose existence 
he had become aware were about to act, till, slowly but surely, 
the knowledge came to him. One curious feature of his novels, 
however, gradually impressed him as remarkable. After he had 
written some incident which he believed to be entirely fictitious 
— possibly even too fantastic for credence— not only did he dis- 
cover that it might have happened, but in several instances he 
discovered that it had happened, or a parallel to it in real life 
occurred shortly after he had told his story. It was as though 
he had set himself up as a brain centre to which had gravitated 



286 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

facts whereof he could have had no actual knowledge or pre- 
monition. 

Passing over the chance which might easily be accounted for 
of his having chosen the name of a living author for his first 
book, it will be remembered how pathetically he described the 
incident just referred to in Alice-for-Short when Mr. Verrinder 
for half a century lived within sight of the madhouse where his 
young bride had been incarcerated. This romance was pure fiction 
to De Morgan when he wrote it, yet he afterwards discovered 
that the tragic story had had an actual counterpart in real life, 
in a bygone generation, when a man took lodgings adjacent to 
an asylum, and lived and died waiting vainly for the return to 
sanity of the wife who was doomed to a living death within its walls. 

Again, in connexion with his third novel, published in 1908, 
several curious coincidences occurred ; but it is first necessary 
to glance at the origin and the outline of that plot. 

' I had written a tale,' De Morgan said, ' which I liked and 
my wife didn't ; and she said to me, " Why can't you write a 
story with an ordinary beginning ? " I said, " What sort ? " 
She said, " Well, for instance, ' It was his last tuppence and he 
spent it in the tuppenny tube ! ' " Said I, " An admirable be- 
ginning ! " I put my story in hand straight away, and began 
writing what is now Chapter II of the book — Chapter I was 
written long after to square it all up ! ' 

Solely from the chance suggestion of that sentence, De 
Morgan evolved the plot of Somehoiv Good — or, as his American 
readers called it, ' Somehow awfully Good ' : a tale which, he 
stated, ' was written and even the typescript completed before 
1905.' It was a story which, dealt with less delicately and 
deftly than he handled it, could have been repellent. ' One can 
imagine — if given to nightmares,' remarks a critic, ' what the 
modern realist, who is forbidden to mention the scent of violets 
so long as there are garbage cans to enjoy, would have made 
of it.' 

A young girl, Rosalind, going out to India to be married, falls 
a victim to a man who abuses the hospitality and guardianship 
that had been offered to her en roide by his wife. In consequence, 
she and her young husband ' Gerry ' eventually separate before 
the birth of the child of whom he is not the father ; and for 
years neither knows what has become of the other. Then, by a 
freak of fate, Gerry, journeying in England, all unv.ittingly meets 
Rosalind's daughter, Sally, now grown up into a lively, beautiful 
damsel ; and, travelling in the same compartment with her in 
the underground, he has an accident for which she is indirectly 
responsible. Stooping to pick up a half-crown she had dropped, 
he encounters a live wire, and, partially electrocuted, loses his 
memory. Sally impulsively makes herself responsible for the 



•ALICE' AND 'SALLY' 287 

unfortunate stranger ; and when her mother, in that unknown 
man ' Fenwick,' recognizes the husband of her youth thus 
strangely restored to her, she silently acquiesces in Sally's 
erratic action. 

Two years later Rosalind and Gerry re-marry, she with full 
cognizance of the past, he unaware of it, owing to continued loss 
of memory. The return of that memory bit by bit, the final 
shock of the complete realization of the past, and his rescue 
by Sally from the sea into which he had fallen half-dazed, con- 
stitute an enthralling story, enhanced by many side-issues — 
Sally's love-affair with ' Dr. Prosy,' her friend Tishy's elopement 
with the young haberdasher from Cattley's, the Indian Colonels 
who had known Rosalind in her youth, and the terrible mother 
of Dr. Prosy and prospective mother-in-law of Sally whom De 
Morgan feehngly describes as a ' goosling Goody ' or an ' Octo- 
pus.' Moreover, throughout the whole, one never misses the 
motif of the story — how ' Somehow, good will be the final goal 
of ill ' ; how Rosalind, despite that nightmare in the past, is a 
woman pure at heart, tender and true, and how, strange thought ! 
beautiful, laughing Sally has sprung into being out of that bygone 
horror — like a lovely flower born from a dung-hill ! 

' Where would those eyes be, conspirators with the hds above them 
and the merry fluctuations of the brows ; where would those lips be, from 
which the laughter never quite vanished, even as the ripple of the ocean's 
edge tries how small it can get, but never dies outright ; where the great 
coils of black hair that would not go inside any ordinary oilsldn swimming- 
cap ; where the incorrigible impertinence and flippancy we never liked 
to miss a word of ; where, in short, would Sally be if she had never emerged 
from that black shadow in the past ? 

' Easy enough to say, had she not done so, something else quite as 
good might have been. Very likely. How can we limit the possible to 
the conditional — praeter-pluperfect tense ? But then, you see, it wouldn't 
have been Sally ! That's the point.' 

De Morgan himself used to declare that he had fallen in love 
Avith ' Sallykins,' and that he was not responsible for her often 
reprehensible conduct. ' She simply goes her own way and does 
whatever she likes with me ! ' He had at first intended to call 
the story ' The Grooves of Time ' ; later he decided to name it 
' His Horrible Baby.' ' The phrase,' he says, ' comes from 
Chapter 43, after Fenwick's question to his wife, " What became 
of the baby ? " My wife thinks the title quite an inspiration 
on its merits. I myself think it gists the novel most concisely. 
But also it drags the unpleasant side into the light. . . .' 

Nevertheless this name was afterwards abandoned for the 
reason indicated ; and De Morgan once remarked that the 
passage in his three novels which he would like to be remembered 
by was that following Rosalind's recognition by her long-lost 
husband. When Professor Phelps concluded his criticism of 



288 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

De Morgan's writing with a quotation from that episode, De 
Morgan wrote to him : ' Do you know, you have wound up youi 
article with the passage I myself look upon as doing me more 
credit than almost anything else in all the books ! ' Both critic 
and criticized understood that in the simplicity with which that 
crucial situation is treated lies its strength. The climax towards 
which all the story had been tending is dismissed in a few words 
with a power in their reticence which pages of laboured descrip- 
tion would have lacked. ' What became of the baby ? . . . The 
baby — his baby — his horrible baby ! ' ' Gerry darling ! Gerry 
dearest ! do think ! ' 

On the publication of the book De Morgan wrote to Heine- 
mann with delight both over its reception and its tangible 
result : — 

' Yours is a very gratifying letter indeed — -I had no idea I was so 
wealthy ! However I, of course, don't really know what the circulation 
of either book has been, either in England or America. It is all curiously 
and surprisingly satisfactory ! 

' The reviews are quite taking me aback. The Pall Mall I thought a 
particularly intelligent one. I see with a good deal of pleasure that the 
unpleasant part of the story takes its proper place as a mere essential to 
the plot. A good many readers will remain in the dark about it.' 

The only adverse criticism, however, which the Press seemed 
at first inclined to formulate was that the story was lacking in 
plausibility since the electrocuting incident and its after-effects, 
on which the whole plot hinged, could not possibly have hap- 
pened ; indeed controversy on this point was already becoming 
heated, when, within a fortnight of the publication of the book,, 
Mr. Heinemann sent De Morgan a newspaper cutting describing 
an exactly similar accident which had just occurred, with a 
similar result, in so far as loss of memory was involved. ' I 
think Somehow Good should prove the most in-the-nick book 
that ever was published,' De Morgan replied. ' Yet I myself, 
when I wrote about the electrocuting incident, beheved it to be 
impossible ! ' 

This coincidence was soon after followed by another. A 
letter came to De Morgan from a heart-broken mother asking 
him if his story had been founded on the disappearance of her 
son, A handsome youth, healthy and happy, the latter had 
mysteriously vanished beyond all trace, in circumstances strangely 
similar to those under which Fenwick was lost to view — after 
travelling by train with only a few shillings in his pocket — his 
disappearance being exphcable only on the same grounds — a loss 
of memory. 

A further and somewhat different illustration of De Morgan's 
unconscious veracity of description may also be cited here, 
although referred to in a letter belonging to a later date. His 
readers will remember how mischievous Sally — the ' Mer-pussy ' 



•ALICE' AND 'SALLY* 289 

as he quaintly called her in view of her prowess in swimming — 
nearly lost her life when saving that of Fenwick, and how, all too 
graphically, were described the agonizing hours during which her 
fate hung in suspense and she — Sally of the saucy speech, the 
pearly teeth, the brilliant, mocking eyes — lay dead to love and 
laughter, while artificial respiration was tried in vain. 

Charles Moores to William De Morgan. 

' (Pickens, Moores, Davidson & Pickens, 
' Lemcke Building, Indianapolis), 

' April 5, 1914. 

* Dear Mr. Db Morgan, — 

' It cannot interest you deeply to learn what a young thing of fifty 
odd summers tliinks of your stories, but you will have to get a letter of 
appreciation from me, for, ever since Joseph Vance came out, I have been 
meaning to write it. I am just old enough to remember when people 
talked of Dickens's latest and waited eagerly for the next. And ever 
since the early 'eighties when I snatched the first copy of each new book by 
R. L. S. and read it first, I have had the joy and disappointment of watching 
for the next big thing that was to be written. I can re-read Joseph Vance 
with thorough enjoyment. But oh, for the joy of reading it for the first 
time ! It makes me think of the sonnet on Chapman's Homer and " stout 
Cortez " standing upon his impossible peak in Darien. Alice-for-Short 
and Somehow Good brought some of that same joy. And now, When 
Ghost Meets Ghost, in the same delicate, delicious vein as Joseph Vance, 
simply impels me to write and tell you about it. It is so bravely long, 
too. Other writers are afraid to write so long a story. Thank Heaven 
you are not ! I wish it were twice as big. 

' As I have read each of your stories and found every time — isn't it 
so with every one of them ? — the terrible reahty with which your idea of 
drowning is brought in, I have wondered what personal experience must 
have given the origin to it. Having gone through the experience in my 
own boyhood I feel that you could not have made it so real, ana therefore 
so dreadful, unless you had shut your own eyes upon the surrounding 
waters for what seemed to be the last time and gone on into unconsciousness. 
This, of course, is unimportant beside the greater things you have done, 
but it is one of many proofs that your pictures of life are the real thing. 
To have known such sweetness as Lossie and Gwen and Sally, and to have 
understood the heart of a little child, and to have given this to the rest of 
us is to have really lived. I love your people and wish I knew you. The 
world will be happier for many a year because of what you have given it. 
Will you pardon my assurance in thus thanking you for my share in the 
gitt f 

' Sincerely yours, 

' Charles W. Moores.' 

William De Morgan to Charles W. Moores. 

' Viale Milton N. 31, 

' Florence, 

' Italv, 

' 19/4/14- 
' Dear Mr. Moores, — 

' Thank you very much for your letter. I cannot tell you how 
much pleasure it is to me to know that my books are giving real satisfac- 
tion. It is the sort of thing that comes back to one to solace a sleepless 
night, wherefrom I sometimes suflEer — but happily seldom. 

T 



290 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

' Your confirmation of my references to drowning is particularly 
interesting, because all I say on the subject is theory. I have never been 
nearer drowning than having to hold ray breath longer than I expected 
on coming up from a deep dive. But the terrible misgiving that I should 
not get to the top in time was quite enough. That my views should strike 
anyone who had gone through it as true reminds me of a letter I once 
had from a gentleman who had all but gone off a precipice into the sea 
like Alice-for-Short and her friend the doctor, and had been saved in the 
same way. He wanted to know when and where I had been in a like pickle 
to know so much about it. I ascribe my success in dealing with these (to 
me) unknown terrors to a fine rich constitutional cowardice. It is the 
same faculty that makes me image t^e passage of a motor-car over the 
body of any of my family who is half an hour late. I could do without 
a good deal of this faculty, as far as comfort goes, but I don't think my 
books would benefit. 

' 1 hope I may manage yet one more before I join those among whom 
many will be found whose resuscitation from drowning failed, some of 
whom \v\\\, I hope, remember enough about it to confirm (or contradict) 
my text further. And also that you may live to read it. 

' Thanks again — from, 

' Yours very truly, 

' Wm. Dk Morgan.' 

Shortly after the pubhcation of Somehow Good, De Morgan 
found himself involved in controversy with various ardent 
Roman Catholics who objected to certain inaccuracies in his 
description of the celebration of the Mass. The passage com- 
plained of describes how Fenwick, still suffering from loss of 
memory, goes with Rosalind on their honeymoon into Rheims 
Cathedral and is present at what he terms the Messe des paresseiix 
' because the lazy people don't come to Mass till ten.' 

' It was easy to put it all away and forget it in the hush and gloom of 
the great church, filled ■w'ith the strange intonation from Heaven-knows- 
where — some side-chapel unseen — of a Psalm it would have puzzled 
David to be told was his, and a scented vapour Solomon would have 
known at once ; for neither myrrh nor frankincense have changed one 
whit since his day. It was easy enough so long as both sat listening to 
Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax. Carried nem. con. by all sorts and 
conditions of Creeds. But when the little bobs and tokens and skirt 
adjustments of the fat priest and his handsome abettor (a ^'oung fellow 
some girl might have been the wife of, with advantage to both) came to a 
pause, and the congiegation were to be taken into confidence, how came 
Gerry to know beforehand what the fat one was going to say, with that 
stupendous voice of his ? 

' " Hoc est corpus viettm, et hie est calix sanguinis mei. We all kneel, 
I think." Thus the bridegroom under his breath. . . . 

' And then the plot thickened at the altar, and the odour of myrrh 
and franldncense, and little bells rang to a climax, and the handsome 
young priest, let us hope, felt he had got value for the loss of that hypo- 
thetical girl.' 

' Unfortunately,' laments De Morgan, ' trusting in my faulty 
memory and in the Penny EncyclopcBdia, I put the wrong words 
into this priest's mouth or the right words at the wrong moment, 
and endowed him with excellent lungs.' His cousin Miss Seeley, 



'ALICE' AND 'SALLY' 291 

however, arranged that the misguided author should meet a 
Roman Cathohc priest, Father Nolan, in order to correct any 
essential errors of which he had been guilty ; and the genial 
Irish divine and the grateful heretic passed a cheery evening in 
each other's society to which both subsequently reverted with 
delight. 

' I felt my position acutely,' De Morgan afterwards related, 
' when an orthodox CathoHc pointed out to me what I had done. 
" It really is rather unjust," said this gentleman, whose attitude 
of forbearance was most praiseworthy, " that when for cen- 
turies we have been accused of ' mumbling our hocus-pocus ' a 
novel-writer should represent a priest turning to the congrega- 
tion and shouting, ' Hoc est Corpus Meum ! ' in a stentorian 
voice." I explained that my attitude during more services of 
the Mass than I could count had been a happy combination of 
inattention with respect, and that I had acted on information 
received — like the police when they made a raid on a betting 
house. No doubt the description of the service which I had 
relied on was written by " a pagan suckled in a Creed outworn." 
He asked me why I had not invested a small sum in a Roman 
prayer-book, and I felt that I had not a leg to stand upon. I 
had to confess to an egregious blunder, but I did what I could to 
the passage in the second edition. And as an amende honorable 
I called the officiating priest big, instead of fat ; and thus, I 
hope, averted the thunders of the Vatican.' 

William De Morgan to Miss Seeley. 

* I The Vale, 
' King's Road, 

' Chelsea. 

' My dear Fanny, — 

' This is partly to repeat what a very pleasant time we had, and 
partly to ask you to pass on a message to Father Nolan. 

' Tell him I am glad to find that I was not altogether deceived in 
forgetting that I had made the priest shout " Hoc est Corpus meum " 
aloud to the congregation. Because the text does not warrant that 
interpretation, of necessity. In fact, I remember distinctly that when I 
wrote, " the congregation were to be taken into confidence," I associated 
the phrase in my mind only with the sho\ving of the bread and the chalice ; 
not with the speech, which I supposed to have been complete by then. 

' The words " hoc est Corpus " following as they do after " with that 
stupendous voice of his " seem to mean dramatically more than they 
actually do. Fenwick speaks them — not the priest at all. But I note 
that Fenwick or Rosalind, whichever described the scene to the author, 
must have made some confusion of the time at which the congregation 
tnelt. 

' I have taken this said author to task for his graceless attitude on 
religion. He tries to sneak out by saying that it is religious engineering 
.hat provokes his spleen, not any form of feeling towards our Cause. He 
prefers acquiescence himself, he says, but chacun a son gout. He says, 



292 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

however, that he has cut out whole pages of horrible impiety because he 
wouldn't hurt the feelings of any fellow wanderers in Infinity — in uniforna 
or out of it. 

' Do you know he says he altered the expression on p. i8o, " A 
visible certainty " from " as chic as you please," entirely from respect for 
the present Pope. Love to your Mammy. 

' Your afEect, Coz, 

•W.' 

De Morgan, however, was fated not to hear the last of his 
theological faux pas for a considerable time ; and so late as 1913 
a priest, Father Vassal! Phillips, sustained a long correspondence 
with him in order to emphasize the lamentable ignorance on 
technical points of ritual which, in spite of revision in later 
editions, the book still displayed, ' and which,' he laid stress upon, 
' is the more remarkable in a writer like you who photographs 
life with the greatest accuracy, as well as delicacy of touch.' 

The crucial points of complaint were : — 

1. The employment by De Morgan of the word ' et ' in the sentence 
of consecration, ' Hoc est corpus meum et hie,' etc., which suggests that 
the two consecrations are conjoined instead of being one only. 

2. That the expression ' his handsome abettor ' implied there 
was only one principal ' abettor,' whereas there are always two taking 
part in the service, the Deacon and Sub-deacon, who genuflect together. 

3. That no one, excepting Fenwick in the text, ever called Mass 
at ten o'clock Messe des paresseux. 

4. That incense is never offered at the recital of psalms in the 
morning. 

5. ' And then the plot thickened at the altar and the bells rang to 
a climax,' etc. The ' climax ' in the Mass is the consecration, and in 
Rome they never ring any bells at Mass after the Consecration. 

Father Vassall Phillips further pointed out that ' No Catholic 
layman (not one, at least, in a million) knows the Words of 
Consecration, or would ever dream of repeating them to his wife, 
if he did know them ' ; while a final and more serious statement 
made by De Morgan in private correspondence he dwelt on at 
great length. For De Morgan, perhaps recalling his father's 
definition of himself and his family as ' Christians unattached,' 
had observed in one of his letters, ' I doubt whether any minister 
of Religion would " class " me as a Christian, and I do not 
" class " myself at all.' ' People,' stated the Priest, ' who say 
they do not wish to " class" themselves either do not wish to 
believe or have not taken the trouble to examine the evidences,' 
[twice underlined]. 

The reticence displayed by De Morgan in his rejoinder re- 
quires no comment, nor the finesse and quiet humour with which 
he parries the thrusts of a controversialist possibly incapable of 
understanding his own limitations or of appreciating the humility 
of an outlook less positive than his own. 



•ALICE' AND 'SALLY* 293 

* 127 Church Street, 

' Chelsea, S.W. 
' Oct. 26, 1913. 

• Dear Father Vassall Phillips, — 

' I hasten to exonerate myself as to point i in yours of Oct. i. 
The following is carefully copied from the article " Mass " in the Penny 
Cyclop : 1839. 

' " . . . the priest consecrates the bread and wine, repeating the 
words : ' Hoc est corpus meum, et hie est calix sanguinis mei,' and then 
shows to the people both the bread and the chalice containing the wine, 
upon which all the congregation kneel down." 

' I need hardly say that I do not cite the P.C. as an authority about 
the Sacraments, in opposition to what you tell me. But to be as accurate 
as the P.C. is sufficient for the " poor scribbler of an empty day." It is 
a high standard for such a one ! Especially if not one lay Catholic in a 
million knows the words of Consecration. 

' A word about " et." If it " suggests that the two consecrations are 
conjoined," does not its omission suggest that they are identical ? Or was 
Virgil's Latin uncanonical, in the fourth century ? 

' " Sed revocare gradum superasque evadere ad auras Hoc opus, hie 
labor est.'''' 

' Virgil can scarcely have meant that the opus was " revocare gradum" 
and the labor " evadere ad auras. ''^ It seems to me (only I am a very 
modest Latinist) that total distinction would call for " hoc est corpus . . . 
et ille est calix." 

' (2) I agree with you that my text might be taken to imply that 
there was only one " abettor " — a handsome one — but that was not my 
intention. Probably Rosalind only looked at the handsome one. 

' (3) What Fenwick said, thought, or remembered at that moment is 
the only speech, thought, or memory that comes into question. 

' (4) I thought I had smelt incense (in the Duomo at Florence) before 
a high mass at the altar in the central enclosure. I suppose I was 
mistaken. 

' (5) No doubt Father Nolan pointed out this error, which I will 
examine again when I get a copy of my first impression. But I had no 
recollection of making the alteration, when I wrote, and I have none now. 
One forgets. 

' If the character you give the Catholic laity (ut supra) is deserved, I 
doubt if reference to any lay Catholic would be of much use for revision 
of the blunders of an ignoramus. 

' Also, one is often misinformed, even by specialists. I removed a Polar 
Bear (in // Never Can Happen Again) from the South Pole to the 
North, under the instruction of a number of correspondents who kvevo 
there were none in Antarctica. Later on, I met a man who had travelled 
to near the South Pole, and put the case to him. He said : " Your 
correspondents may have means of knowing what they say to be true — 
but / won't answer for it ! Put your bear back again in the next edition " 
[ have since read that seals' bodies have been found at the South Pole with 
the marks on them of white bears' teeth. 

' An illustration is suggested by what you say about what a Christian 
.s. Suppose I touched this point in a work of fiction, I should have to 
make choice of a definition. I could accept yours, or I could accept such 
1 one as I suppose Sir Isaac Newton (for instance) would have given. 
But I could not use both. I should be at a standstill, like Buridan'.»i 
proverbial ass between two bundles of hay. Sir Isaac was, I believe, a 
Unitarian. You hold that Jesus the Galilean was Almighty God. I am 
lot in a position to gainsay this. For anjrthing I know to the contrary, 



294 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

it may be the case. But neither am I qualified to deny some hundreds 
of other definitions of Christianity. 

' I think (by your underhning of some words at the end of your letter) 
that you have classed me with " those who have not taken the trouble to 
examine the evidences." Is not that the case ? 

' I have given you as much to read as is warrantable ! Excuse the 
length. 

' Yours very truly, 

' William De Morgan.' 

Thus, apparently, closed a correspondence of unusual in- 
terest, defining as it does the mental attitude of two men whose 
traditions and training were so opposed as that of the Philosopher 
and the Priest — the man absorbed in problems and the man 
sworn to eschew them. ' I have no antipathy to any beliefs 
of other people,' De Morgan once wrote ; ' I merely take excep- 
tion to the recitation of Creeds.' Yet although the arbitrary 
acceptance of any stereotyped dogma could not appeal to a man 
of De Morgan's mental equipment, of his very temperament he 
clung to the belief in some .guiding Spirit of the Universe who 
had decreed the existence of a Future wherein all should be 
' Somehow Good.' 

And there was one problem with which he was ever more 
constantly confronted ; for as the trend of life's journey begins 
to be downhill, the years mark ever more persistently the toll 
which they claim from the affections and friendships of earlier 
days. Death crosses the pathway more frequently ere that final 
day when he stands, a barrier to our own progress, with the fiat 
' Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther.' 

One of the first copies of his new novel had been dispatched 
by De Morgan to Lady Burne- Jones ; and a few days later, 
hearing of the death of her brother-in-law, he wrote as follows : — 

William De Morgan to Lady Burne-Jones. 

' Florence, 
' Feb. i6th. 1908, 

' My dear Georgie, — 

' I was promising myself yesterday at the Villa, where we spent 
Saturday evg., to come back here to-day and write you a cheerful letter 
without a flaw on its horizon. This morning I lighted on the grievous 
news of your family loss in the Times, and it has knocked the heart out 
of me for writing cheerfully. 

' I know Alfred Baldwin was as a brother in your family, although I 
don't think he and I met more than half a dozen times — if that ! But — ■ 
to be taken away like tliis — at an age I sometimes think must be young 
in spite of traditions ! However it's the great old subject words bring no 
nearer to a clearness. Sometimes I think if words would leave Death 
alone, his face would look less forbidding. 

' I write pen-free of all conventionality to you — we have known so 
much of each other's troubles — and this line will do as it stands to place 
us among those who share your grief and your sister's ... all our sym- 
pathies go with it. . . . 



•ALICE' AND 'SALLY* 295 

' Write, so, when you've read the book, and tell me exacHv how the 
philosophy of it (if so grand an expression may be allowed) strikes you. 
Some of the reviewers have caught the idea. 

' The book is, I beheve, flying through the press — 6,000 were ordered 
anticipatamente, and a second issue is in hand already. I often think of 
how all your readings of the typed Joseph Vance were what set me going 
straight r.n with a second — gave me backbone for it. It has been a 
strange story.' 

And only the next month De Morgan was penning a yet 
sadder expression of sympathy on that subject which ' words 
bring no nearer to clearness.' He loved children — who that has 
read his books can fail to see how he entered into the brain and 
being of his little dream-children ? — and when he received a 
letter telling him of a mother who had lost her little daughter, 
he wrote in the fulness of his heart : — 

^2'jth March, igo8. 

' My dear Maisie Dowson, — 

' I have just had the most heartbreaking letter from Lawrence, 
telling me. Really I can hardly bear to think of it — it is too cruel- — there 
was I only the other day writing to you not knowing, and joking, for all I 
remember, about this darling little thing — and all the time it was this ! 

' I could not write at all about it, only now I have got so old and horny 
with constant news of death that I care little how I word the old tale — 
your grief is my grief too — tells it in a phrase. 

' But more and more, the nearer I get to my own exit, I suspect that 
there must be a sun in the background — somewhere in the worst of the 
dark, if we knew where to look for it. It is only a suspicion — but then 
it is a suspicion of a fact — and that's better than a full-blown hope of an 
uncertainty — not very clear, I know, but forgive it. My suspicions crept 
into Joe Vance — -you remember ? — and I don't expect ever to counter- 
write them — in fact they strengthen, it may be mere cowardice that keeps 
them stunted. 

' Still, this expedition of the soul through existence does seem ill- 
organized, as far as this world goes — perhaps the total means to show up 
better — that's the chance ! 

' My next letter but one or two, must be to Egypt, about a gravestone — 
for Mary, I had nearly written — but that contains the current ideas of 
interment — -and they are not mine. 

' If no further change occurs to either, we shall meet in June. TiU 
then I can only send best wishes for the best that may be — for there is 
always a low-grade best left for us.' 

Meanwhile, as Sally made her triumphal progress through 
the press, De Morgan received appreciations alike from friends 
and strangers, a few of which may be quoted here : — 

Lady Tennant to William De Morgan. 

' 34 Queen Anne's Gate, S.W., 
' Feb. 14, 1908. 
* Dear Mr. De Morgan, — 

' You will have known that my waiting to acknowledge your most 
kind thought in sending me your book was only in order that I should the 
better be able to say Thank you, having read it. And now I have finished 



296 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

it, alas, and can sit down and say Thank you most thoroughly. Oh, 1 
have enjoyed it. And I am so indebted to you for writing such altogether 
beautiful and lovable books. 

' Of course, it is full of most particular bits, your books always are, 
bits that one thinks as one reads, " Now there's what I've always noticed 1 " 
or " Now that's what I like best of all." ... It is all delightful, all 
most welcome and so much loved in this family I Things have come 
to be spoken of, little things noticed and known as De Morganisms, now. 
And when my husband reads aloud to me, I am in a continuous simmer of 
laughter and comfortable amusement. I think you must be very glad 
and grateful to have done so much. 

' Of course, Sally is complete. But Tishy is so amusing and pleasant 
too, and her name so nice. And the phrase I think that I like even best 
of all is the old Goody who wobbles down upon you like a hen, and goosles 
at you. That I prize enormously. Then how much I like such things as 
" cows that didn't mind how long they waited at it, having time on their 
hands" — and then of course the " Warrp" to the horse " who was trying 
to eat himself and dig the road up." All these things make the reading 
of your books a joy and the last page almost a sorrow — and I keep 
looking round for the people, and wondering where they are, and missing 
them. So you see, I do love your books. 

' But would Sally, being the great dear she was — and the heart of 
candour, would she — feeling there was something in her mother's life she 
had never been talked to about — would she have asked other people about 
it ? — tried to find out from the other old Major, for instance ? Would 
she not have felt, if her mother didn't speak to her about it, she wouldn't 
care to ask about it or hear of it from anyone else ? I can't help feeling 
it unlike her. I can more readily imagine her asking her mother straight 
out. But tills is only a little feeling. I have suddenly remembered the 
phrase dealing with the " office staff at Cattley's, who were none of them 
Hottentots, but the contrary," and the Sales-Wilson menage, and the bit 
that observes " that most awakening of incidents, a person determined 
not to disturb you." How is it you have not only been able to observe 
hfe so well and kindiily, but also so funnily, and altogether amazingly ? 

' Then how lovely the thought is in the line, " it would make all the 
difference just to see her there, alive, and leagues away in dreamland." 
It is what I have felt often when I go up to see the children asleep, they 
are there, close to one, yet leagues away. 

' But I am sending this to Mr. Heinemann, and at the same time 
asking him to send you a copy of the little book I wrote for children this 
Xmas. It is only a very small return for so much pleasure given through 
your books, 

' I am, 

' Yours very gratefully, 
' Pamela Tennant.* 

William De Morgan to Lady Tennant. 

' i8 Feb. 1908. 

' It's myself is indeed " glad and grateful " to get letters like yours — 
though indeed I get very few so well worded to touching point. 

' It is so satisfactory to know that phrases I really hesitated to write 
lest they should be too overstrained (the goosling goody, e.g.) have found 
a haven and a ready recognition. It gives one the courage of one's con- 
victions next time. 

' I must tell you honestly I wavered a good deal before I decided that 
Sally hung fire of tackling her mother about her story. But I found she 
did it in my dream (so to explain it) and I let the dream have its way. I 




Queen Eleanor and Fair Rosamond 
Evelyn De Morgan pinxit 



•ALICE' AND 'SALLY' 297 

don't know how the story would have worked without her doing so. If 
I had forced this point it might all have worked out differently. 

' We shall not be back till June, but will then come and say, " Come on 
board " at Queen Anne's Gate. 

' I got your most enjoyable book about the pictures a good while ago — 
but now I shall just give away my copy, and treasure the one of your 
sending. Your folk-lore and the scent of hay-fields and the speech of 
country-life give me a mixed sense of Chaucer and White's Selborne hard 
to parallel elsewhere. The pictures are uncommonly well copied too — as 
good tricolours as I have seen. 

' Please deal out kindest remembrances from us both to all of your 
family whom we can claim to know — a good several, and forgive a rapid 
scrawl by a hand that cannot always write as much as its owner would 
like to. This letter is a case in point.' 

H. Marillier'^ to William De Morgan. 

' Feb. 22nd, 1908. 

' We have just begun Somehow Good and are enjoying it — at least I 
am, for my wife is still in the throes of Joseph Vance. 

' I see nothing but your portraits now in the illustrated papers, and I 
expect it is hobnobbing with Church and Stage in the shop windows. I 
understand that a De Morgan Society has been formed in America with 
affiliated branches all over the world, and that the favourite tune on the 
barrel organs is a revival of that fine ancient ditty " De Morgan was a 
bloody buccaneer." The entire song was warbled to me over lunch the 
other day at the Bath Club by Sir Frank Swettenham (to whom I had 
lent Alice) and after several ladies had shown signs of collapse, we felt it 
judicious to leave the Club quietly. 

The same to the same. 

' April Sth, 1908. 
' I have carried your letter about next my heart for weeks past intending 
to write and answer it, I have also been cherishing since the 28th of Febru- 
ary last, a cutting about a ring, reminiscent of Alice-for-Short which came 
up in the earlier stages of what is still known as the " Cliff Mystery." 
' You ask me which is earnest and which is joke about the " bloody 
buccaneer." The barrel organs were my own invention (I am not generally 
credited with having any). I believe the " De " was mine also. I haven't 
seen Sir Frank since. (He, by the v/ay, is a sort of Bloody Buccaneer 
himself — the man who made Singapore peaceful. Have you read his 
Unaddressed Letters ? — if not, do.) 

' But I can dimly remember one gem -like verse from the ballad, which 
is probably in print somewhere. 

' Him pull down de Church, 
Him burn de organ. 
Him ravish all de nuns, oh dear I 
So now de debbil 
Am sure of Morgan 
Bloody, bloody, bloody buccaneer ! 
' I hope you and your lady flourish. We are just beginning to think 
f birds and beasts and flowers here. Daffodils out, and thrushes building 
n our eaves — or is that swallows ? Marble Arch has become an oasis 
in a desert of wood pavement, like the statue of Mammon ; Picture 
Sunday is over, and Punch has had a new joke on the subject, quite 

* The Biographer of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. 



298 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

a good one. We are sending the newly-completed, long-belated " Passing 
of Venus " Tapestry to the New Gallery. 

' But, lor, I expect you know more English news than we do ! * 

In reference to this letter it may be added that De Morgan, 
perhaps on account of his descent from the buccaneer Archbishop 
of York, used ahvays to declare facetiously that nature had 
intended him for a ' bold, bad buccaneer.' On one occasion 
when a lady had taken a snap-shot of him, he afterwards sent 
her one of his novels with the inscription : — 

' From the author, as a token of forgiveness for not snap-shotting 
him in the semblance of a hiccaneer, which is what he would like to 
seem, hut rather as a " kindly old gentleman," which is not his 
ambition. It may be his fault — who can say ? ' 

Shortly after the publication of his third novel, De Morgan 
heard again from his old correspondent Mr. Vance, announcing : — 

' Oddly enough (in view of the old Joseph Vance coincidence), our 
books were published within a week of one another, over here, mine 
appeared on the book-stands on February ist, yours on the 8th. And of 
course the pubUshers' advance notices, milled through the intellectuals of 
newspaper literary editors, got beautifully mixed up. I saw only the other 
day a paragraph in some paper to the effect that the new book by Joseph 
Vance, author of The Brass Bowl, was to wear the curious title of Somehow 
Good ! I'd have sent you my book — but you'd be irritated by our simple- 
tonified spelling, and you won't care for it, partly because it's the same old 
story — Knock-down-and-set-'em-up-again — and partly because it wasn't 
written for the like o' you, but for quite another sort of reader — one who 
wants a drug, not a tonic' 

In most of the letters which passed between De Morgan and 
his ' literary godson ' — a correspondence which extended over 
the space of ten years — a peculiar interest is attached to the 
confidences of those two authors who had been brought in con- 
tact by a strange coincidence while living so far sundered in 
locahty, in age, and in the mentality that pervaded their work, 
which latter, however, was a difference of seeming only, created 
by the force of circumstance. ' If only I were on your review- 
ignoring altitude ! ' lamented Mr. Vance ; ' but for the present 
I have merely the satisfaction of knowing that I am the biggest 
frog in m}^ own particular puddle.' And after reading Mr. Vance's 
latest publication, The Black Bag, De Morgan wrote : — 

' It will excite the readers of whom you speak to madness, 
and they are numerous, and they ask to be excited. But I 
expect the author did not ahvays feel the excitement. He 
knew the way to excite thetn, and did it, thoroughly. But the 
demands of their simple faith, that in Romance-land something 
always turns up in the nick, spoils the story for outsiders — their 
circles' outsiders. And all these last who read your book will 
say " Surely this shop has goods for me too — next week if not 
in stock to-day "... I see you have struck a vein, and they 



'ALICE' AND 'SALLY 299 

will want the knock-down-and-set-'em-up-again, ad lHUum. But 
you will live to do yourself justice, and I hope I shall be on 
this planet to see it. . . . Few could write these books and 
give so clearly as you do the impression of a Hinteiiand in the 
author's mind.' 

And in response to Mr. Vance's plaint of brain-fag, he added : — 
' Overstrain gives the brain no notice, I find. And I am 
glad that, this work having come to me very late, it has come 
in a form that leaves me free to throw down my pen at any 
moment. Half-a-dozen Times' leaders, under pressure in the 
small hours of the morning, would have sent me to the hospital. 
I hope, however, that a steady circulation of the books you 
have already out will secure your leisure for work on my happy 
public- ignoring line. I really never give a thought to the ques- 
tion whether my reader will complain or not. For all the 
wiggings I've had for spinning out and prosing I shall just go on 
doing it as m.uch as I like. But then I have been lucky, and 
Heinemann has been angelic. Five hundred odd pages, and 
never a murmur ! . . . Pleasant information reached me yester- 
day that 8,700 copies of Alice had been printed in England.' 

Upon receipt of Sally, other of his former correspondents 
likewise wrote : — 

Mrs. Fleming to William De Morgan. 

'711, Loudon Street, 
' Calcutta, 
' Feb. 2jth, 1908. 

' Dear Mr. De Morgan (which a Dear you are — and ever will be — 
Especially while you write such books), — 

' From a sun-scorched and dust-laden city where flame flowered 
trees shed petals — like sparks without pity to fixe every breeze — Gold 
tnohur, red cassia, poincettia, hibiscus — [mutahalis sort), I send you all 
thanks for your letter, and Alice -Jor-ShoH. 

' It's too hot for jingles, but I was going to write to you this week 
— in any case, because Alice-for-Short has at last reached a Calcutta 
library, having apparently rounded the Cape five times first — like old 
Madeira, — and I wanted to tell you how much I loved her and enjoyed 
tier surroundings — -and while that letter wailei to materialize — lol and 
behold — you send me Somehow Good. Therefore it was doubtless your 
brain wave that washed Alice-for-Short into my eager clutch. The 
ghosts delighted me particularly and I do admire to see how every 
slightest incident works in and becomes an important part of the 
pattern. Was it grasping of me that I wanted some one to see Old 
Jane's pretty young wraith — while she lay entranced — her poor j^oung 
little spirit — freed from the body and its wrong. Her return to life is 
almost unbearably painful — as bad as the touch of Janey's rings — which 
I have not yet forgiven you for. Also in Somehow Good it was only the 
affection and confidence of a lifetime that enabled me to trust you 
during your shocking attempt to drown Sally. Once or twice even my 
Caith faltered — and I had to sniff and gain courage to go on. 



30O WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

' But as yet I have only read that book once — so I am not competent 
to talk of it as I can of Joseph and Alice. Oh, the dedication to E. B.-J. 
and W. M. * warmed my heart — a living protest against the wickedness 
of thinking of them in the past tense. 

' I am as certain of life's continuance as I am that I now live — but 
nothing really comforts the present pain of the parting here and now. 
Do you remember my automatic script ? You and Evelyn are of the few 
I venture to talk to about it. It goes on fairly regularly, yet is dull 
when I read it over. But I send it — secretly — to the patient S. P. R. 
and they sometimes find things that seem to count. For instance — here 
in Calcutta on Oct. 17th, 1906, my hand wrote : — 

' " Nor guessed what flowers would deck a grave " Downing. . . . 

' " Do not let A. be seriously perturbed. This will be a slight attack 
and a very brief one. A. T. M." 

' That doesn't sound evidential — but when one learns that on Oct. 
17th — Dr. A. W. V. of Cambridge went to see the Downing Professor — 
who was ill — finding this particular attack had been slight and brief, and 
that A . T. M. are the initials of a dead doctor of medicine, friend of them 
both — it gives one a little to think-— doesn't it ? Also — on the death 
day of the poor Downing Professor two months later — there were two 
" coincidences " in my script. Of course, I am not told of anjrthing 
evidential until long and long after. . . . 

' P.S. I am very much indebted to you for the blessed assurance of 
the death of the Octopus. Life with such an one would have been far 
worse than ten drowning deaths for Sally.' 

William De Morgan to Mrs. Holiday. 

' March i, 1908. 
* Dear Kate, — 

' I am very anxious to see a letter I have been waiting for from 
you with a complete criticism of the last book. . . . 

' There are more blunders in this book than in both the others put 
together. I find I wrote AlVs well that ends well for Much ado about 
nothing — why I can't say — can only conjecture. 

' I don't think anything of having made Orion visible at the wrong 
time of year — besides he was coming very soon — and his name is too 
beautiful to leave out of a star-studded sky, on paper. 

' I thought to have managed corrections for the second impression, 
but it jumped out too quick for me. 

' I like the sound of your cottage — to me, it's always delightful in 
Westmorland, because I've never been there, and am only told of the 
excursions people have had there, over mountains. 

' Florence is deliciously quiet, because the Trams have struck — not 
but what they spend their lives striking, like hysterical clocks, to make 
one clear out of the way. They've stopped that way, and done it the 
other. The place is delightful without them. 

' Our loves to you all. May England be merry for you is our wish.* 

Two days later arrived a warm appreciation of Sally from 
Mrs. Holiday : ' The writing, your manner has taken the world 
by storm,' she wrote, ' and the way it seems at once to have 
taken to you — the instant affection I notice in people's faces 
even when they refer to you — the way your admirers shake 

» AHce-for-Short wa.s dedicated to Edward Burne- Jones and Wilham 
Morris. 



'ALICE' AND 'SALLY' 301 

hands, is all so perfectly delightful and satisfactory — that in our 
old age it has been a most delightful experience.' And she 
adds : ' Among your ardent admirers I find only two small 
points of criticism made; one is that Lossie is only interesting 
because she is the woman Joseph Vance loves ; and the other 
is that in Alice-for-Short you might have made Charlie and 
Alice more quickly come to an understanding ; it was, however, 
quite natural they should not : they were such dears they feared 
taking advantage of each other ! ' 

' I am so glad I can't tell you,' De Morgan replied, ' that 
Sally has given you all such satisfaction. She is now passing 
for me into the stage of being a little party I once knew and can 
talk about. Like the others ! For when I say, for instance, that 
Charley and Alice were like the converse of two pugilists keeping 
away and dodging round and round a moveable point, I say it 
as about two independent characters that I, for one, had no 
share in the construction of. I shouldn't know how to set about 
altering them now ! I myself never felt Lossie as interesting as 
Janey, but a good lot of folk I have talked to have simply taken 
it for granted that Lossie is the cynosure of the story. And in 
this case too I have washed my hands of the story personally, 
as it were, and can only speculate from what Joe says. / don't 
know ! 

' I think and hope that anyone reading any of my stories 
hereafter will say, " Evidently this chap had known much nicer 
women than Dickens or Thackeray." I suspect it is actually 
the fact. That is quite true about mothers and daughters — 
novelists seem to have cultivated a parti pris of detestableness, 
why ? — in the name of Goodness ' 

Nevertheless, De Morgan was himself accused of a form of 
' detestableness,' which was alluded to by several correspondents 
in varying terms. Among these the following comments caused 
him some amusement : — 

A Stranger to William De Morgan. 

' Somehow you have the knack of making one feel at home with your 
characters, especially the girls. Only it seems to me that your experience 
of old ladies must have been unfortunate, for nearly all your elderly ladies 
are exasperating. Your fathers are nice, and your sisters just perfect, 
but I wish you knew a real living unselfish old lady to be somebody's 
mother in your next story. I could introduce you to several. 

' Joseph Vance was particularly interesting to me because for one thing 
most of the characters lived near Balham, where I lived i6 years ; 
then he played chess, and so evidently you are a chess player. . . . And 
lastly you are evidently fond of music. Altogether you give me the 
impression of being a nice person to know and to have a game of chess 
with. But goodness knows where you live or whether you will ever 
trouble to answer a complete stranger ? Never mind, it won't do you 
any harm to know that your books have given pleasure to some one — all 
but those old ladies.' 



302 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

A Stranger to William De Morgan. 

' Philadelphia, 

' Pennsylvania, U.S.A. 
'Dear Mr. De Morgan, — 

' Thank you for the golden hours j'^ou have given me with Joseph, 
AUce, and the dears in Somehow Good, including that old humbug the 
Octopus. I can't feel as if I were addressing a perfect stranger, because 
in reading your books I have lived in them, chuckhng aloud and weeping 
(audibly) too. 

' To help me to pass weary, wakey nights when folks should be asleep, 
I play the game of pretend — pretending to be some one whorri I like . . . 
what a difference that does make ! and last night I was you. Such a 
funny patch-work you ! There was some of Dr. Thorpe, a little of Joseph, 
whole lots of Mr. Charley and little bits of Hugh, Rupert, Jeny — the rage 
of sticking envelopes, for instance — the IMajor and C. Dance in for good 
measure. 

' I'm very sorry if I took liberties with you, but at any rate you owe 
me thanks for not putting into the " you " I was last niglit a single bit oi 
that dish-watery little G.P. [General Practitioner] )^ou palmed off on 
Sally ! ' 

Sir Theodore Cook to William De Morgan. 

' March nth, 1908. 
' I should like to thailc you for your charming novels and to send you 
a motto for Sally (I gave up her correct surname), in Somehow Good. 
' It is not very classical, but most appropriate. 
' Parvula, pumilio, xap^T-wv p-ia., tola merum sal. 

' Yours sincerely 

' Theodore A. Cook.' 

Mrs. Drew to William De Morgan. 

' Hawarden Rectory, 

' Alay 22vd, '08. 

' I am going next Monday to Aix les Bains, and hardly know how to 
undertake a long journey without a Lossie or an Alice or a Sally. 

' I was so glad to hear (when I was in London), from Mr. Masterman, 
that the late Prime Minister (Campbell-Bannerman) would gladly have 
put off dying another fortnight if by that means he could have ensured 
reading a 4th Novel of yours. 

' Some oae told me you had several typed — so after all, he might have 
had the 4th treat ? 

' I wished I had known before the funeral at the Abbey instead oi 
immediately after it, as standing close to his coffin I should have had such 
a fellow feeling — it wd have made me such a real mourner — whereas I 
scarcely knew him. 

' I suppose you haven't a novel in type or MS. for me to read on the 
journey ? Please ask Mr. Heincmann to publish a new edition of the 
three in good print.' 

A Stranger to William De Morgan. 

' " Journey's End," 

' Ohio, U.S.A. 
' Dear Mr. De Morgan, — 

' I have often wondered if you would be interested to know how 
much one American girl enjoys your books, and to hear of the queer places 
into which they have penetrated. 



'ALICE' AND 'SALLY' 303 

' Have you been to Grand Manan Island ? One stormy day when the 
fog horn blew continuously I first met " Sally." Two years later I was 
sitting alone (and feeling very much alone) in a wee Japanese coach just 
leaving Kamakura. I suppose I did stare rather hard at the big English- 
tvoman and her tiny husband opposite, but they kept looking at me. As 
they left the train she turned back and said hesitatingly, " You remind 
us both of Sally kins — do you know her ? " I nearly shouted, " Of course 
I do," from the open window in my eagerness to acknowledge our mutual 
friend. 

' When I like anyone particularly I send him or her one of your books. 
There is one copy in Montana that has travelled from one end to the 
other of Dead Man's Canyon. Another that has been loaned, so its owner 
tvrites me, to every English reading resident in the small Indian village. 
You have so many adm -ers over here in this country of ours. Do please 
write lots of books. 

' Sincerely yours, 

' V. B. L.' 
A Stranger to William De Morgan. 

' San Francisco, 

' 1908,' 

* Dear Sir, — 

' I want to thank you for a new world of pleasure and delight, 
which you gave me in Somehow Good. 

' Last night I set the book down with deep regret. And I resolved 
then to do that unpardonable thing — write to the author. 

' This because I know you are very human, and will be glad to hear 
from an unknown reader thousands of miles away. 

' I ambled along over Somehow Good, just poking along delightfully. 
And it was one of the chiefest pleasures of the book that I could do so — 
instead of being histed-highsted out of my chair by a clang and bang o£ 
emotions. In short, I lived in that tale. 

' There was a dear Mer-pussy, a Sally kin belonged to us once, tho' 
no such shadow of blinding sorrow as threatened your Sally ever happened 
in her history. But there were all sorts of similar names — even to a 
" Jeremiah," and all sorts of breathless capers. She learnt to swim, and 
many a joyful plunge she had at Boulogne. But the fate that I trembled 
over for your Sallykins — death in the sunlight of youth — took our Sallykins 
away. Tho' it was not the sea — what matter ? She sleeps at St.Rocque 
in Paris now, and the rest of us miss her sorely. 

' You have made tears of tenderness come to my eyes. Somehow 
Good will not be forgotten. How we shall be on the look-out for more 
De-Morganatic literature. 

* A grateful reader, 
' C. P.' 

A Stranger to Wuliam De Morgan 

' Glasgow, 

' Aug. 24*^, 1 91 1. 

* Dear Mr. De Morgan, — 

' I really wanted to say Joseph Vance — because you are Joseph 
Vance, aren't you ? It struck me last night when I was lying awake 
listening to the wind trying to tear ofE our roof, and enjoying the society 
of Joseph and Lossie, and Sally and Old Prosy, as I often do — it struck 
me that it would only be a gracious thing to thank my host. I mean, I 
have enjoyed that society for so many months that I must thank some oi^e. 
It is like suddenly being cured of some hideously painful disease and going 
ofi without saying thank you to the surgeon. 



304 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

' I am not a girl — I was thirty-two last birthday and I have a jovial 
husband and three wee buddies of my own. But I have not lost my 
capability for dizzy joys and keen delights. I want to die before thai 
goes from me. I think I want to go home in the middle of the party 
still. I used to have to go when I was young. It seemed a hardship 
then, but I know now that it was not. All this about myself : but I 
want you to understand. Nothing outside of me and my life, has given 
me the endless joy that I have found under the covers of Joseph Vance 
and Somehow Good — I can say A lice-for-Shori too, because I am reading 
Alice now. In all my life, beyond the sun on the sea and the wind across 
the heather — nothing has given me more satisfying, lasting pleasure than 
your books. 

' I cannot write what I mean. "WTien I write it, it turns itself upside 
down and pretends to be something else. But Joseph Vance would 
understand, and you are Joseph, aren't you ? Tell me, have you a dear 
Lossie all of your own ? Have you known Sallies and Janies and Alice- 
for-Shorts ? One cannot pick one's friends. I mean there are only the 
people around us, a limited circle ; and the only other choice given us is 
to not make friends at all. I have friends : precious treasures belonging 
to glad days and sad days of my girlhood : but they are not beside me. 
I see them seldom and your books provide me with friends that come just 
exactly when I want them. No other books have quite done this before. 
Joseph and Sally never shirk problems that I put before them nor fade 
unsatisfactorily into nothing when I most need their help and their philo- 
sophy. 

' For all the joy that has come to me and will come to me still from 
your hands, I wish to say " Thank you," dear Joseph Vance. If one day 
when the sun does not shine or some one has hurt you perhaps, or for some 
other reason, your thoughts are less glad than usual, it may make you 
happy to remember what I have tried to say in this letter. It would 
please me to think that I could give you any fraction of the pleasure you 

have given me. 

' Very gratefully yours, 

' M. W.' 

A stranger to William De Morgan. 

' Edinburgh. 

• Dear Author of Somehow Good, — If you only knew what delight 
you have given a little Minister's wife who has the cares of the Minister 
and dozens of children on her mind and body ! 

' I wish I could make you know what a beautiful rest you can give 
tired souls, tired sometimes almost to extinction and want of hope. Sally 
came as the greatest treat with her charming child-of-Natureness, her 
irrepressibility, and joy of hfe ; and all her train. It was with a feeling 
of loss I closed her book. But I have a treat in store for me. You may 
well envy me for I have to make the acquaintance of Joseph Vance and 
Alice-for-Short yet! And somehow or other I must make them mine. 
The cares that beset the mother of dozens as to the dressing and finding 
the footgear wherewithal to present them faultless before the Congregation 
(of elders' wives, say), and finding the variety of wholesome food the soul 
of healthy children loveth (which latter almost persuades me to fill them 
with the husks the Simpler Food Society provides) makes the falling astray 
into the charmed realms of your beautiful works very, very delightful, 
if sinful ! There— I've written a page and a half of nonsense wluch you 
may never bother finishing, but still from the heart of 

' A lover (and admirer) of, 

' Sally.' 



•ALICE' AND 'SALLY' 305 

One more letter requires a brief explanation. 

Far away in a city in America a little man lay dying under 
melancholy circumstances. He had led, apparently, a most 
useful life ; he had devoted his entire existence to the promotion 
of local charities and philanthropic organizations ; he had written 
books to aid his humanitarian schemes ; and now all this mental 
and physical activity was suddenly brought to a close, and the 
great Tragedy had come upon him in ironical guise. The ex- 
traction of an aching tooth by a dentist, for which cocaine had 
been employed, produced poisoning ; paralysis ensued, and the 
end was a foregone conclusion. 

Then as he lay waiting for the slow coming of Death, during 
the long hours of that invalid existence which contrasted cruelly 
with his former happy activity, he read Joseph Vance ; and it 
seemed to him as though, groping in a great darkness, he had 
suddenly clasped the hand of a friend. So powerful an impres- 
sion did the book make on him, that he subsequently kept it 
always by his bedside, and he became filled with an intense 
longing, before he passed to the great Beyond, to have one 
personal communication from the author, that friend many 
thousand miles away, who had soothed his mental and physical 
anguish. So his relations wrote privately to De Morgan, to beg 
the latter to gratify the whim of the invalid ; and De Morgan 
who, however great his weariness after long days of ceaseless 
penmanship, never failed to respond to every correspondent, 
WTote with a great tenderness to the unknown man who was 
passing so sadly through the Valley of the Shadow. 

By and by the answer came. 

• 1908. 
* My dear Mr. De Morgan, — 

' Your friend died last evening. He had become blind and quite 
helpless, and I am sure that he was a very happy little man when he moved 
up somewhere else. 

' He loved " Alice " and " Sally " ; but " Joseph " remained his 
helper and companion. 

' His nurse writes me that she read Joseph Vance through to him from 
cover to cover at least six times and " often he called for certain passages 
as Puritans caUed for verses from the Bible." 

' Your letter he sent me to read and said " Please return it at once 
because I may die so soon, and I want to read it again before I go." I 
thank you for your goodness to him.' 

Thus it was that while De Morgan's books sped to different 
parts of the globe, their readers wrote to him — not conven- 
tional words of fulsome praise such as many authors receive, 
but letters written from heart to heart — letters from lonely 
people who had found a friend, weary people who had found 
rest and refreshment, letters from old and young, clever and 
simple, from the sick, the maimed, the dying, all confident 

u 



3o6 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

of sympath}' and of that tender comprehension which they had 
found in his pubhshed words — ' that personahty,' wrote one, 
' which is all in all in the De Morgan novels.' By and by, 
De Morgan had a special receptacle made for this correspon- 
dence, for in its great mass, with the strange and often pathetic 
stories which it suggested, it formed a human document such 
as it has been the lot of few men — if any — to receive. 

But occasionally among the letters dealing with his new 
profession, came some which seemed like a breath from a far-away 
past. 

' Will it interest you [asks a correspondent from Gcorgcville at the 
close of a long letter] to know that I asked a very clever and delightful 
man in Cuba if he had ever read Joseph Vance, and he said, " Read it ! — 
Why, I've read Joseph Vance nine times, and Alice-for-Short eight ! " 

' And now I have something more to thank you for, since a friend has 
sent me a bowl of the colour of old wine full of iridescent hues, a perfect 
delight to my eyes, and I hear that it was made under your guidance. 
You do not know how its colour glows in this little cottage way up in the 
mountains in Canada, nor what a pleasure and joy it is to all who see it. 

' Altogether I couldn't help writing to you, could I ? and I do thank 
you with all my heart.' 

John Ward ^ to William De Morgan. 

' The Mount, 

' Farningham, Kent. 
' ^th April, 1908. 
' Dear Mr. De Morgan, — 

' I am much interested with your Pamphlet on Pottery for Egyptian 
Clays, albeit that I am an ignoramus in such matters — and your scientific 
lore on practical potter's work was beyond my wits to grasp. 

' Often have I gazed at Egyptian potters' work at Keneh and else- 
where, and admired their use of their fingers and toes, and wondered at 
the really pretty forms they produced as if by magic, rising out of a lump 
of clay into elegant shapes of a perfect symmetry. 

' In Spain I once travelled with Henry Doulton of Lambeth, and 
James Anderson Rose (the latter was the man who made Doulton add a 
sort of Artistic refinement to the cult of making drain-pipes — in the 
manufacture of which humble but essential aids to civilization Doulton 
had made a large fortune). 

' We came to a remote pottery, somewhere in Andalusia, and found a 
nice-looking ancient gentleman " throwing " vases and pots of excellent 
form, on a very primitive wheel. We got into conversation with the 
artist, and when Doulton complimented him on the speed of the hori- 
zontal wheel, and told him he had worked a similar wheel when he was a 
boy, the old gentleman said, " If you ever learned to throw a wheel properly 
you can never forget it — try again ! " So dear old Doulton took off liis 
coat, took his seat at the bench, and made pots equal to the native — much 
to his and our delight. 

' He told us that his father, who had started the great Lambeth pottery 
in the early years of the last century, made him work at the trade for 
seven years, as a practical potter, and so he learnt so much, that he died 
a millionaire with a title, 

* John Ward, F.S.A., Author of Pyramids and Progress. 



'ALICE' AND 'SALLY' 307 

' I don't know if you ever met Doullon ; he wa-^ an excellent fellow, 
and our companifin to most cities in Europe on out Eastern trips of many 
years. We visited Florence, Venice, Bologna, Genoa. Turin, Milan, etc., 
etc., and I formed the taste for travel and art that led me afterwards to 
every city in Europe (almost) and afterwards to Egypt and Greece and 
Turkey. 

' Now the work of the Potter in all ages is the means of determining the 
age and date of cities and settlements back to prehistoric days, and I read 
yesterday in a lecture in the Times by Professor Dunn, on Bibhr.al Palestine, 
that nine strata of as many diliercnt cities, super-imposed one upon the 
other, had been explained and dated by the evidence of their pot-sherds. 

' Your old trade was a wonderfully old art, and must have fascinated 
you, and then what glorious tiles you made ! 

' Your new trade is fascmating for you and for the public — 1,000 for 
every one who appreciated the tiles. But I am glad that you produced 
the glorious tiles when you were young ! 

' Yours sincerely, 

' John Ward.' 

* I don't believe,' De Morgan said once, when asked about 
the possible reproduction of a series of his former designs for 
pottery, ' that those tiles could be reproduced except the moment 
of the world when they were made could come back. So of 
all work where the thread is lost — with the added need often 
(as in this case) of bringing back a giant from extinction, if 
extinct, or from the job he's on, if any ! ' 

Yet so late as 1914 he was still looking back on that van- 
ished career with a haunting regret. ' I wonder,' he wrote 
to Mr. Marillier at that date, ' whether a centenarian twenty- 
eight years hence will squander his book-royalties on the erection 
of new kilns, with superannuated dodderers to pack and fire 
them ? If I were personally in England 1 should do that very 
selfsame thing. I can't tell you how I miss never having a kiln 
to open next day ! ' 



CHAPTER XIII 
THE REAL JANEY 

AS De Morgan gradually drifted into the new routine entailed 
by his change of profession, he systematically referred 
all that he wrote to his wife ; and he often stated that he never 
began any story till she had given him the keynote in an open- 
ing sentence. Every Sunday he read aloud to her what he 
had written during the week ; and when a book was entirely 
finished, he read it to her again from cover to cover to ascer- 
tain whether the narrative ran satisfactorily as a whole. With 
her fine intellect, her scholarly training, and her rich imagina- 
tion, she was an excellent critic ; and as she had been the main- 
spring of his inspiration, so hers remained the final verdict 
against which, in his view, there was no appeal. To her alone 
it was due that he did not actually destroy certain of his books 
through a mistaken impression of their futility ; or ehminate 
much delightful by-play through a too-amiable desire to pander 
to the views of printers and librarians. 

* But the worst is,' he complained to Sir William Richmond, 
' she will fall asleep at the crucial passages, and then when she 
wakes up swear she hasn't missed anything at all, and that 
it all fits in perfectly ! ' ' He always,' added Sir Wilham, ' referred 
to her as " She," and spoke of her with a mingled pride and 
reverence which was infinitely touching.' The mysterious 
dedication of Somehow Good ' To M.D.W. from W.D.M.' was 
his dedication ' To My Dear Wife.' 

' The first thing which I look for in every review,' he admitted 
once, after the publication of Joseph Vance, ' is the evalua- 
tion — if any — of Lossie and Janey ' ; and although there exists 
no manner of resemblance, as portrayed by his pen, between 
the homely, placid Janey and the briUiant personality of his 
own wife, there is no doubt that the bonded sympathy, too 
delicate and too deep for any laboured insistence, which he 
makes one feel so powerfully existent between Joey and Janey 
was, in all its completeness, a personal experience. 

There was, moreover, one little romantic incident consequent 
upon his sudden literary success which was especially charac- 

308 




The Sleeping Earth and Waken [ng Moon 
Evelyn Db Morgan pinxit 

[In the possession of Mrs. Stirling. 



THE REAL JANEY 309 

teristic of both himself and his wife. At the time of his en- 
gagement, owing to the state of his finances, he had, at Evelyn's 
especial request, never given her an engagement ring ; and 
now that those finances had improved, the first thought that 
occurred to the lover and husband of twenty years was that 
she should have the belated gift. He therefore hunted about 
for a considerable time to find some stone which should fulfil 
his ideal of flawless beauty ; and at length, in Italy, he found 
a fine sapphire set round with diamonds— a gem of rare trans- 
lucent colour. 

' I have at last found what I have been looking for ! ' he 
announced joyfully to the old Florentine from whom he purchased 
it, and the latter amused him by the mysterious rejoinder : — 

' You are buying more than you know, Signor. This is 
no ordinary stone. It has magic in it as well as beauty, and if 
given as a token between those who love, it will never pass to 
another.' 

' It sounds just as if I were a bit of a fairy-tale ! ' said De 
Morgan to his wife; but there were those who, having learnt 
the remark of the mystic Florentine, found cause to recall it 
later. 

One result of De Morgan's success in his new profession, how- 
ever, was to deepen a nascent aversion on Evelyn's part to ex- 
hibiting her work. Throughout her girlhood, as we have seen, 
and throughout the years when the expense of the factory 
had been a constant drain upon her resources, the sale of her 
pictures had been a necessity. Now came a breathing space in 
that arduous labour, so that she was able to cast her eyes on 
the world around and to see the change which had stolen over 
the spirit of Art. She visited the exhibitions of Cubist and 
Futurist painters, and gazed with frank bewilderment at the 
vagaries of those new exponents of Idealism. She heard the 
ignorant praising the impudent, the trickster triumphing where 
sincerity had failed ; and her comment was reticent : ' I am 
reminded,' she said, ' of Hans Andersen's story of the Emperor's 
new clothes ! ' Meanwhile De Morgan, writing of this later 
development of what he had nicknamed the ' Boshite ' of his 
youth, remarked : — 

' Every one knows that unless he praises what other people think 
rubbish, they won't credit him with a liigher form of knowledge than 
their own, and that's the sort of fame that bounce grows fat upon ! ' 

One conclusion, however, Evelyn De Morgan arrived at : 
' If that is what people like now,' she said briefly, ' I shall wait 
till the turn of the tide.' So she continued to paint with un- 
abated energy, but when a picture was completed, she placed 
it against the wall, and seldom even troubled to have the glass 



310 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

dustnd. Each successive painting was thus set aside to be 
forgotten ; and another promptly begun. Work and the 
necessity for self-expression sufficed. 

During the years which followed, there flowed from her brush 
many lovely fantasies of which only a few can be referred to 
here. 

Of those reproduced in this volume, ' The Garden of Oppor- 
tunity' is a picture singularly rich in decorative effect and wealth 
of detail, so that it presents something of the appearance of 
a piece of old-world tapestry in which the colours have been 
miraculously preserved. In a fair landscape are seen two 
mediaeval Italian students clad in beflowered garments of 
mauve and rose. They are turning away from Wisdom who, 
yellow-robed and full of a sorrowful grace, is standing beside a 
sculptured seat of ruddy porphyry ; they are pursuing Folly 
— a lovely little figure who seems to have drifted down the 
Ages from the brush of Botticelli. So light and airy is her 
poise that she looks as though she would dance out of the pic- 
ture ; her robe is fashioned of pearly scales with a fluttering 
mantle of sapphire ; and she is holding out to her dupes entic- 
ingly a silver ball of which the reverse side, hidden from their 
vision, is a skull. In the distance, tinted pink and ochre in 
the sunset, are buildings— water-mills and a Fairy Castle over 
which the moon is rising ; while round the corner of the road- 
way is peeping a little devil who lends a note of humour to 
the situation, in that he is conspicuous for what the painter 
used to term his ' De Morgan forehead,' as well as for the 
impish glee with which he is watching the on-coming of the 
errant youths. 

Of a different type is the picture of ' Helen of Troy.' A single 
figure of radiant beauty, she is toying with her golden hair and 
gazing, enthralled by her own loveliness, in the mirror of Venus. 
Her robe is bright pink, while at her feet blossom white roses, 
and about her circle snow-white doves, dazzling in their purity 
against the background of sunlit landscape and azure sea. 
In the distance the fated towers of Ilium show, clear-cut against 
a translucent sky. A companion picture of ' Cassandra ' repre- 
sents the prophetess, clad in blue with blood-red roses at her feet, 
her wild, mad beauty outlined against a background of Troy 
in flames. 

In ' The Valley of Shadows ' the Riddle of Life is depicted. 
A King, in a robe of gold, is standing in front of his crumbHng 
Palace, while his foot still rests upon the neck of a lovely slave. 
Fame is wandering bhnd-fold down the Valley, dropping her 
Favours erratically as she moves. Opposite, into the blue and 
pawning Caverns of Death, a victim, in the pride of his man- 
iiood, is about to take the fatal plunge. In the centre, in draperies 



THE REAL JANEY 311 

of crimson and white, a nun-like figure is raising impassioned 
hands to the deaf heavens where, dun and intangible, there 
floats the vision of an angelic form. 

The larg^ picture of ' Saint Christina giving away her Father's 
Jewels to the Poor ' (12 ft. by 7I ft.) is an ambitious conception, 
the grouping and the composition of which is very striking. 
The pale, ethereal saint, clad in white with a cincture of red, 
is standing on the steps of her pagan father's Venetian Palace. 
In accordance with the legend respecting her, she is distribut- 
ing to the poor jewels from the idols she has broken. Angels 
in a long procession and in lovely draperies are descending the 
wide stairway behind her to aid her in despoiling the treasures 
of the Palace. In the foreground the picturesque Italian beggars 
are thronging in their boats to the marble steps — the blind, 
the avaricious, the wretched — beautiful despite their misery, 
their drapery falling into graceful folds, greed or tragedy ex- 
pressed in their fine and eager faces ; while one almost seems 
to hear the splash of their boats passing through the blue waters 
and the ripples ceaselessly lapping the cool, pale marble. 

' Queen Eleanor and Fair Rosamund,' a comparatively small 
canvas, is arresting alike for its delicate imagination and dex- 
terous handhng. The mediaeval atmosphere is again indicated 
in the decorative effect of the interior depicted. The ancient 
yew hedge of the mysterious labyrinth is seen through the 
open doorw^ay ; an oaken seat, finely carved, is conspicuous 
in the foreground ; a deeply recessed window of glowing glass 
shows above the frightened face of Fair Rosamund. And the 
two women who figure in this setting, Eleanor and her victim, 
are both clad in robes so exquisite in hue that these seem to 
shimmer into different shades while one strives to define the 
dominant colour in each ; moreover the draperies of both are 
sown with pearls, each tiny pattern representing a different 
study in perspective. But a sinister note is struck by the 
evil emanations which exhale from Eleanor ; shadowy, snaky 
forms and ape-like faces, transparent but foul, enter wdth her ; 
and before their horrid presence the pitiful little Loves who had 
hovered about Rosamund, weeping and terrified, flutter away 
amid the drifting roses of a fragiant Past. 

Other pictures cling to the remembrance of those who have 
seen them : The lovely ' Daughters of the Mist ' who linger near 
a mountain chasm while the first rays of sunrise dye their filmy 
robes to a tender rose ; 'The Sleeping Earth and Wakening 
Moon,' the latter enshrined in a transparent globe while her shin- 
ing locks trail away into golden cloud ; Boreas, a weird Blake- 
like figure fiercely dispersing the naked, fallen leaves ; or ' The 
Worship of Mammon ' which recalls the imagery of G. F. Watts, 
and which, like 'The Daughters of the Mist,' presents a remark- 



312 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

able study in drapery. Against a background of star-studded 
sky, deep with the sombre blue of a Southern night, two figures 
show in bold rehef . One is a woman in whose keen face hunger, 
covetousness and despair are expressed, as she clings in frantic 
supplication to the knees of a giant Form which towers above 
her. And Mammon sits there enthroned, a figure of brass, 
whose face and shape, half-revealed, accentuate the mystery 
which enshrouds him : a Presence suggestive of relentless force, 
of limitless power, of implacable cruelty, and of torturing pro- 
vocation as he holds at arm's length the well-filled money- 
bag, for ever out of the reach of the unhappy wretch who craves 
it. Wholly different in atmosphere, though poignant in pathos, 
is 'The Poor Man who Saved the City.' A lonely, attractive 
figure with a wise, sad face, he is seated among the brambles by 
the city wall, where he meditates in solitude, while the people he 
has saved and the great ones of the land go, with banner and 
trumpet and public rejoicing, to celebrate all that has been 
brought to pass by the wisdom of the man they have so quickly 
forgotten. . . . 

Others there are, too numerous to mention, which cannot be 
represented here even in the reproductions which, robbed of their 
glowing colours, fail to convey their atmosphere and their charm. 
Virile and strong, dehcate and subtle, infinite in variety, in 
poetry, in inspiration, Evelyn's work never flagged throughout 
the passing years ; but while she withdrev/ more and more from 
the world, living in that dream-world of her own creation and 
in her selfless devotion to that other Hfe which ran side by side 
with her own, her husband, as success came to him, facetiously 
remarked the volte-face in their respective positions : ' Formerly 
it used to be Mrs. De Morgan and her husband, now it is Mr. 
De Morgan and his wife ! ' Of all which he owed to her, how- 
ever, he was profoundly aware ; and once when some one was 
talking in enthusiastic terms of his genius, he cut short the 
panegyric gently by pointing to the ' real Janey ' : — 

' There is the genius,' he said. 




The Poor Man who Saved the City 
Evelyn De Morgan tinxit 

_" There was a little City, and a few men within it ; and there came a great king against it, and 
besieged it, and built great bulwarks against it. Now there was found in it a poor wise man, and he 
by his wisdom delivered the City ; yet no man remembered that same poor man. 

"Then said I, Wisdom is better than strength: nevertheless the poor man's wisdom is 
despised." — Ecclesiastes. 



CHAPTER XIV 

'BLIND JIM' AND ' LUCINDA * 
1907-1909 

THROUGHOUT this period, the perpetual contrast between 
his present celebrity and his previous failure gave De 
Morgan a happy, harmless gratification. ' I am glad you like 
my books,' he wrote to one correspondent. ' I am puzzled at 
my relation to them ! and very much surprised at their success. 
It's a funny story altogether ! ' He was like a child with a 
new toy ; the novelty of his experience delighted and amused 
him, while leaving the inherent simplicity of his character un- 
touched. The mere fact of being lionized — the letters which 
continued to pour in from all parts of the world ; the adulation 
of his especial public ; the eulogies of the Press ; even the social 
functions to which he was incessantly bidden, were to him all 
part of a splendid adventure which had overtaken him un- 
awares : ' the last of Life for which the first was made.' ' His 
literary career was the happiest time of his life,' his wife wrote later. 
' It was roses, roses all the way.' And when, on rare occasions, 
the experience was momentarily reversed and a jarring note 
warred with his contentment, he accepted this with the same 
air of deep, but detached, interest which he might have devoted 
to some impersonal phenomenon. ... * His frank amusement 
over adverse reviews,' remarked an interviewer with apprecia- 
tion, ' might be a trifle disconcerting to those who have some- 
times attacked him with a rancour very clearly bom of jealousy. 
. . . He avows openly that he writes to please himself, and listens 
with an amused smile to any protest against his being as " his- 
torical," or as prolix and discursive as he chooses ! ' 

Nevertheless it was a constant source of surprised satisfac- 
tion to him that the pecuniary anxiety of his artistic career 
was now at an end, and that a steady flow of money continued 
to pour in from the royalties on his books. ' I feel hke Croesus ! ' 
he said with a suggestion of bewilderment. Yet when some 
friend asked him what was the nature of his contract with 
Heinemann he responded contentedly, ' I never really worrj^ 
about contracts. When I want some money, I just write to Heine- 

313 



314 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

mann for £i,ooo and he sends me a cheque, and when that is 
gone, I write for another. It's much simpler ! ' Though this 
must not be taken too literally, all his correspondence on mone- 
tary matters connected with his literary work is distinctly 
naive. 

' You mentioned ' [he \vTites to Heinemann in one letter] ' that I might 
apply to you for an advance, but we didnt name any amount, and I feel 
a little puzzled when I try to make up my mind how muclt to ask for. 
Would you solve the problem fc^r me t)y sendmg me whatever sum you 
think the circumstances warrant, at any such time as you may find to 
be convenient to you ? ' 

On another occasion when Heinemann had offered him some 
payment, we find him refusing cheerfully : ' Thanks be to 
Gracious Goodness, I am not in any need of money ! ' Indeed, 
he never was able to divest himself of a conscientious feeling 
that he was taking an undue advantage of his publisher : ' I 
seem to myself a lazy, undeserving chap who sits in a warm 
room and writes twaddle, and then gets a lot of money for it ! ' 
Again he remarks with mild astonishment, ' Fancy Statement- 
time having come round once more ! I wonder who buys these 
books — I suppose the world is an uncommon big one ! ' His 
unwonted wealth provided him with a fruitful subject of jest. 
Going by the Underground one day, he flung down twopence 
with a lordly flourish and observed with hauteur, ' I've grown 
so rich that I just slap down the coppers without a thought ! ' 

Of stories, however, illustrative of his irresponsibility in 
finance, his friends had endless store. On one occasion, after 
being urged to consult a stockbroker respecting some depre- 
ciating security, he replied sapiently, ' I don't believe in those 
chaps — stockbrokers. They are dangerous. My idea is — if 
you have money in an investment, keep it there. To alter an 
investment seems to me something like tampering with the 
Constitution of the British Empire.' This attitude was emulated 
by his wife. ' I have never,' she once remarked cheerfully, 
' looked at my pass-book since I married — I was so afraid of 
finding there was nothing there ! ' She, however, was admittedly 
more practical than he was ; indeed, it was only through her 
disinterested conduct in the past that she had ever known the 
stress of any financial crisis. 

But while De Morgan's third novel was outselling the pre- 
vious ones, and while he was, as he described, ' close at it, scrib- 
bhng, scribbling interminably,' there came a day which marked 
the close of an epoch in his life and that of his wife. 

On August 2, 1908, Spencer-Stanhope finished a picture on 
which he had been working for some time, with the remark 
that now he intended to have a long rest. That night he slept 
peacefully, and when morning dawned they found that he had 



'BUND JIM' AND ' LUCINDA ' 315 

entered upon a rest which could not be broken. ' How glad 
I should be,' wrote De Morgan, ' to go across to the other side 
in the same way — write (as it is writing now) up to the last 
hour or day, and then get away as happily from this painful 
flesh — and leave as good a memory behind as may be, though 
few of us may succeed in leaving as good a one as his — and so 
many to treasure it.' 

This loss meant that Florence — now the home of so many 
years — could never be the same again to De Morgan and his 
wife, even though, for a time, Mrs. Stanhope continued to live 
on at the Villa which her husband had beautified, and a semblance 
of the old life continued. Moreover, during the spring of 1909, 
as De Morgan was wearily trying to complete a book which he 
referred to as ' a terrifying MS.,' a serious interruption to his 
work occurred in a succession of earthquakes, which further 
served to lessen his attachment to his Florentine home. 

Evelyn De Morgan to Mrs. William Morris. 

' Jan. ly th, 1909. 

' How kind of you to write ! Yes, we are both all right, but nervous 
after our earthquake, it was a sharp shock, and coming on the top of the 
Messina horrors produced a considerable panic. 

' We were both asleep, but the noise woke me, then came the shaking 
and swaying of the room, and we both sprang up and dressed in less than 
five minutes. We were at the top of a very high house, so we had the full 
benefit of the shaking. We and some Russian friends spent the night 
partly out of doors and partly sitting in my studio (which is on the ground 
floor), with all the doors open, fearing another shock that might bring 
the house down. Some people slept through it, but a great many turned 
out and spent the night m the streets. No harm was done, but at Bologna 
the Palazzo Pubhco was injured, and a lady died of fright. It has not 
done my nerves any good, and we tremble if a door bangs. The weather 
is lovely, but the gloom of Messina hangs over everything, and one can 
think of nothing else.' 

' My work,' De Morgan wrote to Heinemann, ' has flagged 
terribly in the last fortnight. You have no idea what a strain 
on the nerves this sort of thing becomes when one lives on the 
4th floor of a house that, a few years since, had to be tied up 
after an earthquake ! And there have been slight shocks again 
recently. ... I am very ambiguous about everything in con- 
sequence ! After the solid earth has once jumped under one's 
feet, all faith in being undisturbed three seconds hence goes, 
and you can as little go on writing as though you had just seen 
the postman on the doorstep and expected him to knock ! ' 

So early as January 18, 1908, De Morgan had written to 
Heinemann : — 

' As to what I am at work on, I am going on with a story which is not 
so good a story as Sally. It has no plot ; and I have not at present the 
remotest idea hovv- it will turn out. Then I have only got to 64,000 words 



3i6 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

— rather like Little Billee when he'd only got to the 12th Commandment— 
but unlike liim I can't cry out, " Laud, I see ! " — for I don't.' 

Later he wrote despondently of this new book, which he 
proposed to call ' Blind Jim.' 

' I'm not in love with it myself. I have written at this moment my 
237,000th word. About 31,000 of this since 1 arrived here, but I have 
only had about 30 working days — so much interruption at first. I'm 
going very slowly, even when at work. My impression is that in practice 
I go at the rate of 1,000 words per diem. 

' However, I hope this and the revision of the whole will run con- 
currently with a big final delay, viz. : the needful time for reading it 
aloud to Mrs. De M. She, you see, is a very strong character, and when 
she wakes up, makes me read all through again from her last recollection. 
But this final read-tlirough is a sine qua von ; and if deferred till the proofs, 
it would be letting a most valuable discrepancy-detective loose on the 
work just a few hours too late, so to speak. Also this reading the whole 
aloud is my own final revision . . . for when it comes to plausible print, 
I overlook things. 

' I have got interested in the wind-up — and She also — emphatic- 
ally, which is satisfactory ; so I am a good deal reconciled to it — think 
much better of it than I did. . . . Thanks for the agreement. I won't 
sign it yet. " Blind Jim's " life is sufficiently precarious without having 
a signed agreement to kill him ! ' 

' Unfortunately,' wrote De Morgan to a friend, ' Heinemann 
says this interminable MS. cannot be hung over till the autumn 
because then comes his Hall Caine — who follows the tradition 
of his ancestor and kills his brothers.' Meanwhile the title 
underwent many variations. He had substituted ' Sunless 
Jim ' for the name first chosen ; aftervi'ards he called it ' The 
Rocket Stick ' ; finally he decided to issue it under the attrac- 
tive name of It Never Can Happen Again. Further, at his 
special request, Heinemann consented to brave the boycott 
of the libraries and risk its publication in two volumes in order 
to ensure better print ; indeed, the whole was thus recast by 
him after it had already been printed in one. 

According to Heinemann's intention, both volumes were 
to have as a frontispiece a picture of the author ; the first, 
a portrait of him painted by his wife in 1893, and the 
second, a more mature portrait which she was completing at 
this date. 

In the latter picture, De Morgan is depicted surrounded 
by tokens of his two professions. His hands are clasping a 
lovely iridescent pot, one of the last he made ; on the wall 
behind him shows a beautiful plate of his own designing ; and 
along adjacent shelves stand the three books he had already 
published, while the unbound MS. of It Never Can Happen Again 
lies conspicuously upon the table placed beside an inkpot and 
pen. The face in the picture was a faithful Hkeness, save only 
that the look of bright animation and humour which was habitual 




PORTEAIT OF WiLLIAM De MoRGAN BY Ev'ELYN De MORGAN 

Painted 1909 

Bequeathed by Evelyn De Morgan to the National Portrait GaUery. 



'BLIND JIM' AND ' LUCINDA * 317 

to him was replaced by a most pitiful expression of weariness ; 
for his wife, with the uncompromising accuracy for which her 
portraiture was remarkable, had caught the mood of the moment 
and— much to his subsequent amusement— reproduced un- 
erringly the profound boredom which he was experiencing 
while having to sit to her ! 

But in spite of Heinemann's representations, both the victim 
and his tormentor raised characteristic objections to the publica- 
tion of this pkture. 

William De Morgan to William Heinemann. 

' The portraits are not my property, but my wife's. My personal 
identity (as far as I retain the copyright) is at the disposal of an^^ arrange- 
ment you and she are agreed about. I shall say nothing to bias her, one 
way or t'other — but to you I feel bound to remark that two portraits in 
one work savours a little of egotism, and will make a poor bloke (when 
he's me) feel ridiculous.' 

Mrs. De Morgan to William Heinemann. 

' Both my husband and myself agree that what with the volumes in 
the background, and the pot in the foreground, to say nothing of inkpots, 
etc., it is far too bumptici-s a thing to be tolerated and too self-advertising 
to be allowed outside the family circle ; so the idea must be given up.' 

' I should,' wrote De Morgan later, ' like to see an Author's 
edition announced " without portrait " and uncut — an edition 
for Early Victorian paper-knife people like himself ! ' 

Meanwhile De Morgan had heard from Professor Lyon 
Phelps that, in 1909, the Yale University Prize for excellence 
in original composition was to be awarded for the best Essay 
on the works of William De Morgan. 

William De Morgan to Professor Lyon Phelps. 

' Via Lungo il Mugnone, 

' Florence. 

' It took me some minutes after receipt of your kind letter and enclosure 
to gi'asp the full extent of the compliment you have paid me — it has taken 
me a night's sleep on it (I got it yesterday) to consider how I can express 
my sense of it. Well ! — I've given it up as a bad job. I can't I 

' For really the selection of liis work as a subject worthy of real thought 
and reflection is as high a compliment as can be paid to a recent writer, 
whose reputation has scarcely had time to acquire equilibrium. And 
from no source could it be more flattering to its recipient. 

' Will you add to my indebtedness ? When the prize is awarded, 
which I suppose will not be before the summer, it would be an immense 
pleasure to me to read the essay — you print, of course ? May I look 
forward hopefully to the perusal ? 

' It has been a great interest to me to go carefully through the " List 
for General Reading." What a lot I haven't read ! — e.g. it reminds me 
that for thirty-odd years I have been going to read Burton's Anatomy of 
Melancholy — and have never done it ! 

' I must read Bob, Son of Battle — quite unheard of by me till now. I 
see in the list of novels I have a century to myself, so far 1 ' 



3i8 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

Professor Lyon Phelps to William De Morgan. 

' ibth Jan., 1909. 

' Of course I shall send you the printed Essay. . . . 

' The more I think over your books, the bigger they get in my mind. 
Old Vance's death-bed joy on hearing that his son was the one who hit 
the sweep, and the allusion to the Waldstein Sonata, and — hundreds of 
other things are simply unforgettable. The first chapter of Somehow 
Good is a permanent contribution to Literature.' 

De Morgan's return to England in May, 1909, involved certain 
melancholy conditions. At the time when his Florentine home 
seemed changed in essence, the home in London where he and 
his wife had lived for twenty-two years was coming to an end. 
The sword of Damocles, in the person of the modern jerry- 
builder, had long hung over the Vale, and soon that picturesque 
little spot was to be a wilderness of bricks and mortar repre- 
senting every phase of destruction and reconstruction. During 
their absence in Italy, indeed, it had suffered from neglect. A 
great weed, like some tropical plant, and other unchecked vege- 
tation running riot, had transformed it into something resem- 
bling the Tale of the Briar Rose ; and De Morgan, in The Old 
Man's Youth, represents his hero, Eustace John, thus paying 
a final visit to his old home : — 

' The last time I saw the place . . . though it remained then an 
oasis in the desert of bricks and mortar that grew and grew throughout 
the whole of our occupancy, the signs of its approaching doom were upon 
it. The entrance ga-tewaj' swung helpless on one hinge, and it seemed no 
one's business to repair it. The lane was defiled with filth and discarded 
journalism, and the trees were dead or d^dng. The gardens remained, 
but a weed unfamiliar to me, that I never knew the right name of, overran 
them, and the standard rose-trees were things of the past. . . .' 

Nevertheless De Morgan, in conjunction with his two neigh- 
bours in the doomed locality, Mr. Stirling-Lee, the sculptor, 
and Professor Oliver, decided to give what he termed a ' house- 
cooling ' in contradistinction to the usual ' house-warming ' of 
an in-coming. He therefore consulted his brother-in-law, Mr. 
Stirling, about a suitable motto wherewith to embellish the 
invitation cards, and the latter suggested: 'Ave atque Vale.' 
A few days later De Morgan wrote triumphantly : ' Evelyn 
came into my room yesterday saying, as I thought, "I've got 
such a capital motto : Mox moturi te salutamus. Vale ! " 
It was a lucky mis-hearing to my thought, as " Mox moturi " 
runs " morituri " closer than " nos moturi." It will do beauti- 
fully.' So the invitations were dispatched with the two mottoes, 
and the recipients understood the ominous words, ' We about 
to move, salute you ! ' 

' We spend the time putting directions on envelopes,' wrote 
De Morgan busily ; ' I have been all the way through the Red 
Book except WXYZ, and am panting to come to the last 



•BLIND JIM' AND ' LUCINDA ' 319 

man ! ' Meanwhile the conditions looked hopeless for an enter- 
tainment designed to be partly al fresco, for it was a niggardly 
summer of continuous and torrential rain ; yet when the im- 
portant date arrived a day of unclouded sunshine faded into 
a night of balmy breezes and glimmering stars. 

And as darkness fell, the Vale, like a victim adorned for the 
sacrifice, took on a new beauty. All carriages were stopped 
at the prosaic King's Road, and the guests wandered a-foot 
into an unexpected Fairyland. Old Chelsea Pensioners in their 
scarlet coats guarded the lane, which was festooned with glow- 
ing lanterns ; and at its end the three householders received 
in the centre of the roadway under trees gemmed with fairy 
lamps. There, all around, brickwork and foliage were alike 
sparkling with points of flame. Wherever the eye turned, the 
illumination was repeated with artistic effect, the colours blend- 
ing softly, the lines of twinkling fire swaying in the breeze, and 
creating, down spangled vistas, an impression of limitless space. 
The three houses and their respective gardens were open to the 
guests of all, and each offered a different form of entertain- 
ment, both within and without doors. In one, a band played 
softly while nymphs drifted a-tune over the turf in picturesque 
dances ; in another, a more strenuous concert was performed ; 
while in the De Morgans' garden choral singing, heard through 
the open doorway of the studio, was interspersed by the song 
of a living dryad among the bushes, hard by where the head 
of Pan, in pottery, looked out wickedly from a grove of grass- 
green lamps. As the hours of the lovely night went by, the 
guests wandered and lost themselves in the flower-scented 
dimness, while pretty dresses shimmered to changing hues in 
the varying lights, and merry voices punctuated the dreamy 
music. Then, by and by, there was supper and song in the 
old deer park, beneath the doomed trees which, Vv^reathed with 
fairy-lights, rocked gently — continuously — in a whispering 
breeze. 

' There was music, and good talk and laughter,' related 
the Press, ' and in Mrs. De Morgan's beautiful, half-lit studio, 
her exquisite saints and angels, set in lilies and scarlet blossoms, 
looked down upon us with their serene sweetness, calling us back 
to Italy with insistence, while we listened to a chorus of sweet 
ItaHan voices. . . . Every detail of the brilliant scene had its 
especial value, and comes back with startling clearness. . . . 
We were all the gayer, seemingly, because this was the end.' 

' I passed the evening,' De Morgan wrote to Heinemann, 
' in such a hopeless bewilderment in a huge throng, that we 
might very easily have both been in it unknown to each other. 
It was like Cremorne ! It Never Can Happen Again because 
we go out at Michaelmas.' 



320 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

Unfortunately, before that date, an accident which befell 
Evelyn caused a severe injury to her right arm which, for a 
time, threatened to disable it permanently. Confronted by 
the honor of a crippled existence during which she might never 
be able to paint again, and for the present unable to travel, 
she and her husband remained perforce at the Vale under con- 
ditions which were peculiarly melancholy, for the work of 
demolition was in active progress and the sound of pickaxes 
rang in their ears all day. 'This with our move impending! ' 
wrote De Morgan tragically. 'I had to give up my voyage, 
and we are here still by grace of our landlords. All the place 
is pulled down about us, and we are isolated in a wilderness 
of brick rubbish.' In consequence, a legend obtained credence 
that De Morgan had refused to leave his old home even when 
the walls were falling about him. 

Under such conditions of anxiety and discomfort he greeted 
the publication, on his 70th birthday, of It Never Can Happen 
Again, dedicated to the memory of Ralph, Earl of Lovelace, 
' in remembrance of two long concurrent lives and an unin- 
terrupted friendship.' The date of the public appearance of 
this book fulfilled a prediction he had made, in consequence of 
a critic having misstated his age, that if he lived to be seventy 
he would in the interval write four or five volumes as long as 
his first. Simultaneously with its appearance, the following 
verse was sent to him from America : — 

* A Novel Rhyme 
(With apologies to William De Morgan). 

' Joseph Vance kissed A lice-for-Short 
As the two in the library stood : 
It Never Can Happen Again, she cried. 
He sighed : It was Somehow Good ! ' 

De Morgan was extremely anxious to ascertain the result 
of publishing his book in two volumes in defiance of the fiat 
of the libraries. ' If any discussion arises from it which enables 
me to sa}'- my say audibly on the subject of the arbitrary limita- 
tion of the length of books, I shall consider that the sacrifice 
has not been in vain,' he said ; for he remained convinced that 
the tendency of such action was to make the literature of the 
future superficial by forcing it inevitably into a groove, so that 
all writers, whatever the nature of their ability, would perforce 
aim at being impressionist rather than profound, at achieving 
a brilliant tour de force rather than any faithful picture of Ufe. 
' For all the cleverality of such novels,' he conceded, — ' and 
no word suits them better than the one Charlotte Bronte coined 
— their characters are apt to be vivacious passing acquaintances, 
not lifelong friends.' 




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•BLIND JIM' AND ' LUCINDA ' 321 

But his conclusion in regard to the experiment was disap- 
pointing. ' It is the old cry for cheapness,' he discovered, ' com- 
fort and luxury — even the quality of the contents do not weigh 
in the balance,' and to his cousin Miss Seeley he wrote : — 

' The book is boycotted by four of the largest hbraries, 
ostensibly for being too dear, and in two volumes. I don't 
think it matters, because it is all the same to me whether 100 
people read circulating library volumes or 10 buy copies for 
themselves. As for the other 90, if they like having their books 
Index Expur gator iiissed by these chaps, they must please them- 
selves — I should transfer my subscription to less Papal libraries. 

' Heinemann has offered to supply the book to them in one 
volume, if that's the difficulty. As to the price, if they can't 
buy books at -^d. for 11,000 words, with commas and semi-colons, 
and all well spelled, they may e'en go without ! ' 

' None the less,' he wrote later, ' I think the action of the 
libraries has brought about so many private purchases that 
we (publisher and self) really stand to gain by it ! ' 

Not perhaps so generally popular as his earlier books, this 
fourth novel is nevertheless one of his finest studies of char- 
acter. The plot hinges on the passing in August, 1907, of the 
Bill for legalizing marriage with the Deceased Wife's Sister. 
It describes how Challis, a successful author, husband of an 
aggressively suburban wife, dwelling amid aggressively suburban 
surroundings, by reason of his literary celebrity finds himsdf 
transported into a social milieu superior to that to which he has 
been accustomed. He goes to stay at Royd, a typical country 
house, and there encounters handsome Judith Arkroyd, ' a 
Grosvenor Square young lady,' as his wife defines her, who is 
illustrative of a certain type of society woman : hard, self- 
absorbed and unscrupulous, yet pre-eminently fascinating. 
An adept at flirtation, she exercises her charm upon the lion 
of the hour as a pastime, and ends by finding that what heart 
she is possessed of has become more seriously involved. The 
situation turns on the fact that Marianne, the author's wife, 
is the half-sister of his first wife, and therefore it appears pos- 
sible for Judith to become legally united to the man with whom 
she is infatuated if the marriage can be rushed through before 
the passkig of the Bill which would rivet his union with Marianne. 

One of the most graphic scenes in the book is when Challis, 
unconsciously drifting under the spell of Judith's witchery, 
returns home, full of self-deception and good resolutions, to the 
stupid little wife whom he conscientiously thinks he loves, 
and who awaits him with a dawning suspicion of the dangerous 
fascination of her rival. The atmosphere of the life which he 
has left compared with that to which he comes back is cleverly 
suggested — never insisted upon. The long, wearisome drive 

X 



322 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

from Euston in an evil-smelling cab with a jaded horse ; the 
arrival at a house palpably redolent of mutton and cabbage 
cooking for the delayed dinner ; the inevitable row with the 
extortionate cabman and the obnoxious ' runner ' ; the m.atter- 
of-fact, somewhat acrid greeting of Marianne, the woman whom 
he is morally bound to love — all contrast with that different 
world which he has left, above all with the haunting glamour 
of that incipient romance — the existence of which he still men- 
tally denies, 

' When any lady or gentleman comes back from an absence in a cab 
with luggage on it — however passionate may have been her or his longing 
for a corresponding him or her who may have been (or might have been) 
watching at the door for its arrival, or however much the two of them 
may feel disposed to — • 

' " Stand tranced in long embraces 

Mixt with kisses sweeter, sweeter 

Than anything on earth " 

they usually find, in practice, that it is necessary to stand matters over 
because of the cab. This does not, of course, apply to where a man- 
servant is kept, who can pay fares dogmatically, and conduct himself like 
the Pope in Council. But where the yearnings of both parties have to be 
suppressed all through a discussion of the fare and a repulse of the unem- 
ployed, whose services have been anticipated by your own mercenaries 
. . . well ! do what you will in the way of cordiality afterwards, it is 
chilUng, and you can't deny it. We know we are putting this in a very 
homely way, but this is a very homely subject.' 

And later, when for Challis the time of self-deception has 
passed, and Judith has maddened him into a betrayal of the 
secret he had guarded even from his o^\^l consciousness, still more 
realistic is the description of that other return to the silent house 
which his wife has left ; of the solitary hours that followed, 
punctuated by the voices of quarrelling servants indoors and 
drizzling rain without, and rendered more intolerable by the 
recollection of that wonderful episode in the garden at Royd the 
evening before — of proud Judith with her passion-lit eyes, her 
beauty intensified in the mystery of the moonlight, her dress of 
sequins, flashing, paling, with a thousand opalescent tints while 
it swathed her about, like the scales of a snake, lithe and sinuous. 
. . . And as the tortured man recalled that reprehensible inci- 
dent, there floated about him again the stillness, the moonlight, 
the intoxicating scent of the roses, the murmuring speech of the 
woman who had wrung from him a confession he deplored. . . . 
Life is full of such contrasts— of such resolutions as those framed 
by Challis — which leave a man as putty in the moulding of Fate. 

In a book of this description, teeming with a variety of 
characters and incident, it is difficult to instance one episode or 
one person as being more especially worthy of quotation. ' You 
want your De Morgan whole, or you want none of him,' aptly 
pointed out a reviewer. Nevertheless, among the finest pieces 



'BLIND JIM' AND ' LUCINDA * 323 

of characterization is undoubtedly that of the athletic Rector, 
Athelstan Taylor, a magnificent specimen of his profession, 
whom one meets alike at Royd and in the slums and hospitals, 
coping heroically with unmentionable hon^ors. He serves to 
refute the heretical opinions of Challis on matters theological, 
thus presenting different aspects of certain many-sided problems 
which are further, if more satirically, exploited by the meta- 
physics of the great German philosopher, Graubosch, and his 
interpreters. De Morgan introduced the character of the clergy- 
man into his book partly at the representation of certain 
readers, and partly out of gratitude for the warm appreciation 
expressed for his novels by so many ecclesiastical critics. ' Even 
Canons and Bishops seem to love me in spite of my heresies ! ' 
he said once, and ascribed this to what he termed his ' immor- 
talism.' As to the philosophy of Graubosch (to the initiated 
Grand-bosh), ' The Standard,' he wrote to Miss Seeley gleefully, 
' says that Graubosch is the silliest thing ever written. It 
must be very silly ! ' 

But the outstanding feature of It Never Can Happen Again 
remains the faithfulness with which three grades of Society are 
depicted — the clique to which Judith belongs with its own 
peculiar limitations of outlook and tradition ; the suburban life 
of which the exponents are the petty-minded Marianne and her 
friend the mischief-making Mrs. Eldridge ; and lastly the slum- 
life wherein the reader makes many valued friends besides the 
impressive Mrs. Steptoe — ' Aunt Stingy ' — and her poor, pathetic 
brother Jim Coupland, the blind ex-sailor -with his little ' py-lot ' 
Lizerann — Lizerann of whom none can surely read without a 
catch in the voice, being as she is one of the most human, pitiful, 
and tragic little figures in all fiction. 

And throughout the story, divergent as are the courses of 
these various lives, their destinies overlap and are interdependent, 
so that no episode in their several histories is extraneous or 
irrelevant to the whole ; and the final denouement, when it 
comes, is as ingenious as it is unexpected. 

Anent this book, De Morgan wrote to Professor Phelps : — 

' Of course I like Lizerann and Jim better than the others. But they, 
the others, are Uke the man in Uncle Remus' s story who might have been 
ole one-eyed Riley — there they were in the story and I had to see what 
could be done with them. 

' I hope you will live to read many novels I shall never live to write. 
Now, isn't that an illustration of how intelligible the technically inaccurate 
may be ? ' 

* At the time, when my parents and I were reading aloud 
It Never Can Happen Again,' relates Miss Holiday, ' some remark 
was made in De Morgan's presence about the repellent char- 
acter of Mrs. Eldridge. "I flatter myself," he replied, " that 



324 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

Mrs. Eldridge is the most odious character in all fiction." " But 
did you ever meet her in real life? " I asked. " No— o, at least, 
she's a mixture of two or three women — in that sense I have met 

her ! " 

' Judith is an awful minx ! ' complained another fnend to 

him. . , , u 

' Well, you see — she was a minx — I couldn't help it ! he 

replied regretfully. 

' The only thing,' suggested a hypercritical reader, ' which 
struck me as far-fetched in the book, was the chauffeur driving 
over poor blind Jim twice and never even stopping ! ' 

' That is the only thing in the book which is really true ! ' 
said De Morgan. 

Yet he lamented a lack of reahsm in one episode. ' On the 
first page of Vol. II Marianne is biting a pencil. There is not 
a particle of evidence that she had taken a penstick out of her 
mouth that was there at the beginning of the same page. She 
never had both in her mouth at once ! No, no !— it's a clear case 
for apology and correction. See next impression, please ! ' 

' This book,' writes a settler to De Morgan from a lonely ranch, ' is 
to my taste, the better novel, but Joe Vance is the better circle of friends. 
My chum from California (honest we don't say pal and pard except m 
Bret Harte) is re-reading it for the fifth time, and says all the Calif ornians 
are doing ditto ! ' 

' Don't I just long,' writes a lady from Philadelpliia, ' to learn whole 
chunks of the juicy bits by heart ! ' 

' I do truly love your books. And You,' announces another at the 
beginning of a very long letter. ' That is really all I want to say, I suppose, 
and it is said. And seeing that if you knew who I am you certamly 
wouldn't care tuppence whether I loved you and your books or not, why 
say more ? ' 

But the most apt appreciation, one which at least pleased 
him by its brevity, was as follows :— 

A Stranger to William De Morgan. 

' June 20th, 1909. 

'Dear Sir, — ^ tt u 

' There is only one thing to be said about It Never Can Happen 

Agaivir—l wish it might I . ,r * ■^^.f n 

' Yours faithfully, 

' C. G.' 

At the close of the book De Morgan had invited his readers 
to criticize anything in his work requiring revision, which he 
promised should, if practicable, be remedied in a later edition. 
The result was that he received many interesting letters, some 
of which contained suggestions upon which he acted. Amongst 
these was a communication from New Zealand pointing out that. 



'BLIND JIM' AND ' LUCINDA ' 325 

* There is one incident in the book which Never Has Happened 
Before, namely that of the polar bear in the South Atlantic — 
polar bears being as scarce south of the line as albatrosses are 
north of it.' So De Morgan removed his bear to more suitable 
regions, with the result to which he referred in his correspondence 
with Father Vassal Philips — that he had to put him back again ! 

' Why do you add to your labours by answering all those 
correspondents ? ' some one once asked him. 

' I must answer them,' he responded quaintly, ' or they'll 
think they are out of my good books ! ' 

Before the advent of It Never Can Happen Again, De Morgan 
heard from his old friend Mr. Vance : — 

Louis Joseph Vance to William De Morgan. 

' Box 38, 
' Vineyard Haven, 

' Massachusetts, 
' September nth, 1909. 
* Dear Mr. De Morgan, — 

' My father, having written a book, wishes me to send you a copy 
thereof. He says he tliinks that the author of Joseph Vance might be 
interested to read a book by the author of Joseph Vance. And I think 
he will be, for in spite of the H' sin Big John Baldwin itha,s nothing wha.t' 
ever in common with The Brass Bowl and The Black Bag — praises be I 
' So I'm sending you the book by this post. 

' Believe me, I am, with best wishes, 
' Faithfully yours, 

' Louis Joseph Vance.' 

When De Morgan examined this volume, he found the title- 
page inscribed as follows : — 

' To William De Morgan, author of " Joseph Vance," from 
W. Vance, great-grandson, grand-nephew , cousin, son, brother and 
father of Joseph Vance.' 

Meanwhile the competition for the Curtis prize had taken 
place in America, and the best Essay had been judged to be by 
Henry Dennis Hammond, an undergraduate from Tennessee. 
This was published in the Yale Courant, and tv/o copies were 
sent to De Morgan ; one he returned, with amusing comments 
written on the margins, and a letter addressed to the young 
prize-winner, in which he says : — 

' I should be very curious to know whether by chance any of the 
competitors have detected my special motif in each of my three volumes. 
No reviewer has hit the mark — and no one in conversation so far. So I 
doubt whether my own version would recommend itself to my readers, 
and shall just keep my own counsel about it.' 

Later, in regard to this same question, he wrote to Professor 
Phelps : ' I meant a motif apiece for each volume ; but I feel 
very unprepared to make an exact wording of it. What I meant 



326 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

was, I should like to see whether any of the young competitors 
had caught the clue I catch occasionally in my own meaning. 
For instance, if one were to say that the dominant of Dr. Thorpe's 
little lecture sounds all through Joseph Vance, I should feel 
he and I were rather in communion. But I should hesitate to 
claim immortalism passim as the keynote. It would be too 
broad a statement. 

' I should have to speak with a like reserve of both the other 
books — but each had a motif, I know. Perhaps I should screw 
myself to more explicitness if I had not a slight attack of 'flu. 
It makes one dodder ! ' 

At this date De Morgan, at the instigation of Professor 
Phelps, had been reading what the latter designated ' the greatest 
dog story ever written, though it has a hundred readers in 
America to one in England.' This was a novel by a young 
writer, Alfred Ollivant, which was published in America under 
the title of Boh, Son of Battle, and in England as Owd Bob. While 
perusing this, he received a copy of the Fomm which contained 
an article by Professor Phelps on the novels of Mrs. Humphry 
Ward, upon receipt of which De Morgan wrote : — 

' This is just to convey my thanks to you for the Forum. All I can 
say is, Heaven avert such a keen searchlight from my own misdeeds. 
For at present I am being let off easily, owing to literary youth and in- 
experience. 

' I ought to know Mrs. Humphry Ward's work better than I do. 
But the same is true of more great authors than I can count. She has 
biased me a little against her works still unknown to me by going " Anti- 
Suffragette." I may, however, be supposing you are otherwise, too 
readily ? 

' I was grateful to you for bringing me to know Owd Bob — but I did 
think it had got the wrong title. " The Tailless Tyke " surely would 
have been a truer one. McAdam is lovely — I didn't care much for the 
lovers though. . . .' 

Later he wrote : — 

' I see we are of one mind that the most vivid interest of the story 
is in the tailless tyke and his master — nothing could be better than either. 
Of course one loves Bob better — but one is very wicked by nature, and 
picturesque fiends of all kinds must continue engrossing.' 

In the same letter, in answer to Professor Phelps's condem- 
nation of spelling reform, he remarks : — 

' How I agree with you about this spelling craze ! How could I else, 
holding as I do that to ask the way to Charing Cross is to make an enquiry, 
but that one makes an inquiry into the nature of things ? My broad 
impression is the enquiries get answers, and inquiries don't. Please put 
this down to flu, if you see no meaning in it ! ' 

One result of De Morgan's success in literature was that, 
ivith the complete absence of any element of pettiness in his 
)wn nature, he appreciated all the more keenly the merits of 



'BLIND JIM' AND ' LUCINDA * 327 

other writers in comparison with that of the ' lazy, undeserving 
chap ' he pictured himself to be ; while his own scanty know- 
ledge of modern literature distressed him. ' I wish I were three 
gentlemen in one Uke Cerberus ! ' he wrote to Professor Phelps, 
' and then two of them should read books, while the other wrote 
human documents ' ; and again he says : ' I am simply horribly 
ashamed of the quantity of modern fiction that I do not read — 
(that's ill-expressed but clear in sense), and as soon as I have 
written my last word, I must turn-to seriously and make up 
for lost time — I think I must take a hint from your text, and 
begin with The Return of the Native. I read Far From, etc., 
when it came out, and Tess only half, a friend carrying it away 
when I was half-way through. That has been the fate of so 
many novels in my hands ! ' 

When his friend Mr. Scott-Moncrieff sent him a volume of 
newly-published poems, entitled Amor Amoris, and the book 
amved at the moment of the annual departure for Italy, De 
Morgan wrote afterwards describing how he and Evelyn alter- 
nately snatched the volume from each other in order to devour 
some especially delightful passage, till they all but lost their 
train in consequence. Later he remarked respecting an American 
review of this book : — 

' I have read the quotations, as a small boy picks the currants out of a 
cake ! 

' English authors certainly meet with recognition in the U.S.A. — 
sometimes much too ! — as instance me, of whom my friend Lyon Phelps 
at Yale deliberately said recently that I was Dickens redivivus, or much 
the same thing ! 

' You are more Shakespearianly Shakespeare than can easily be 
accounted for. It's a puzzle. 

' Do you know, I thought it was the Wind you made the bridegroom 
of the Sea, so that my mind had to discipline itself to accept the Sun ; 
however, it's at rest now and the Sun is as welcome. Perhaps the Sea is 
bigamous, if we knew. 



' I congratulate You 1 , . 

Mackail \ °^ ^^^"g 



the acquaintance of Mackail ) 
Yourself f 
' Love to you all from both halves here — better and worser.* 

And when Mr. Moncrieff became disheartened at the lack 
of appreciation for poetry evinced by the public, De Morgan 
wrote earnestly : ' You have just got to pay no attention to 
what anyone thinks (except me, of course !) and leave a big 
lump of verse for posterity, anyhow ; though for my part I 
hope there will be a revival of poetry and art one day soon. 
Believe me, the biggest man is he who pays least heed to his 
misfortunes, and goes on doggedly, using up the rest of the 
time to the best advantage. Stop ! Isn't that too preachy- 
weachy ! However, I was really thinking of the undersigned 



328 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

who certainly wasted 40 years of a long life, and is sorry now.' 
On another occasion, after Mr. Moncrieff had altered some 
verses to please him, he wrote naively : — 

' Bravo ! I like that heaps better. Nothing hke nagging at a Poet ! 
Why not send it to The Times ? It is only a matter of chance. They 
must have tons of poetical MS. sent them. I sent them some lines myself 
a little while since, and they came back — they are very good about return- 
ing things, so one knows where one is. 

' I suppose the absence of adjective is to be aimed at. Still, a poem 
that I account a triumph begins with two — Browning's " Love among 
the ruins "... Of course the omission of all the parts of speech would 
make a language technically perfect, and would reach the ideal of the 
maxim — " Least said soonest mended ! " ' 

To Lady Glenconner, after peeping into the pages of her 
volume of verses entitled Windlesiraw he wrote in delight at 
' the audible voice of the book ' ; and his remarks recall that 
little babe — the ' three-toed wood-pecker ' — of nearly seventy 
years before, poring over the fat volume of Bewick's Birds. 

' I won't particularize poems — I should name so many it would take 
the edge o£E distinction. But you certainly have the most happy faculty 
of Tennysonian landscape, backed by a knowledge I envy of birds and 
flowers and trees. I do wish I had paid more attention to them in my 
time — the)'- would come in so useful in these later days of pen-and-inkery. 

' I suppose " windlestraw " is the chafE that blows from the winnowing 
machine ? It's a word I never heaird — but I dare say a common one 
enough in country districts.' 

Of Browning he wrote : — 

' I wish I had read The Ring and the Book — a shocking thing for a 
writer to say ! But it's all past pra^dng for now, for me. I refer to the 
study of the literse humaniores — I scarcely looked in a book for forty long 
years — there's a confession ! — a little exaggerated in form from chagrin 
at the truth of its spirit, but substantially true for all that. 

' So I am really a stranger to my BroAvning, not having read what so 
many think his greatest achievement. (That's so, isn't it ?) 

'"My ignorance of this poem must be forgotten, please, in consideration 
of my admiration of his shorter p>oems, witliin my grasp, and especially 
of the fact that my enjoyment of " John Jones " has rather than otherwise 
enhanced that admiration. Even so a friend once told me he had never 
really enjoyed the " Appassionata " sonata until a man WTote, and played, 
a caricature of it. But how that caricaturist must have known his Beeth- 
oven ! What a knowledge of Browning must Swinburne's have been ! 

' The twenty-six letters of the alphabet are very powerful. If it were 
not for them the chief recollection of Britannia by the States would be 
the discomfiture of the former's butler by Uncle Sam a century or more 
ago. But the mere rearrangement of those 26 makes Browning and 
Shakespeare possible — even if the latter was really somebody else.' 

After reading a book of Oscar Wilde's, he wrote : — 

' What a queer fish he was ! One would have thought he would have 
shown his cloven foot in his writings. But I cannot detect a trace. He 
is uniformly brilliant and fantastic — perhaps a pause might be welcome 
sometimes.' 



'BLIND JIM' AND ' LUCINDA * 329 

In January, 1910, Professor Phelps published his Essays 
on Modern Novelists, in which the first Essay, from which quota- 
tions have been given, is devoted to WilHam De Morgan ; and 
this drew from the latter an interesting comment on his own \*ork 
and that by his unknown friend : — 

' Your book has come to hand, and — need I say ? — my 
reading aloud to my wife of your much too high estimate of 
my work gave intense pleasure to both of us. For it would be 
merely artificial to pretend that one's amour propre (one's wife 
is included always) is a bit the less gratified because one has 
subcutaneous doubts of one's deserts— on the contrary, I doubt 
if one doesn't enjoy a good pat on the back all the more under 
these circumstances. Anyhow, thanks heartily ! 

' So far, speaking broadly, I can express my gratitude. But 
I don't know how to find words for my appreciation of your 
keen insight into the soul of the books. On p. 19 and 20 you 
have detected and emphasized the ingrained immortalism in 
J. Vance better than I have seen it done yet. I chose to write 
the book on these lines ; but even in this, observe, I only expressed 
the views of my puppets. I have a right, as mere wire-puller, 
to keep my own views to myself. " Stet " is all I have to say 
about everything they say. 

' So, on pp. 22-23 we are d'accord. People won't believe 
me generally when I tell them I love Janey better than Lossie ; 
but it is true, and you can believe it on my assurance, as you 
are of the same mind. I could have drowned Lossie much 
more easily than Janey. 

' My father's identity is divided between Thorpe and Absalom. 
To me it does not enter into that of Joe's father, who has no 
prototype in any one individual. I have not consciously used 
my father's humorous side in any of the books. But his immor- 
talism was as marked as Shakespeare's or Browning's. . . . 

' Of course, I go off in Mississippi mouths at the end because 
by then I've cotched my victim and he's just got to read or let 
it alone. That's his look out ! 

' My works are, in my own opinion, founded almost entirely 
on Dickens, with very rare streaks of individuality. I nearly 
burned Chaps, i and 2 of /. Vance because I thought the imitation 
too gross. 

' Your collection of authors' interruptions of their text, 
to talk to the reader, is most amusing. Some law of limitation 
should check this sort of thing — I don't think any has been 
formulated — I notice (for my private consolation) that the 
only specific instance given of this vice in me comes from a 
chapter heading, not from the text. I dare say my memory 
is at fault, but I can call to mind no case of my talking about 
the story-structure as an author to the reader as its reader. . . . 



330 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

However, I am the last man in the world to have any right to 
take exception to critiques — I have been let off so jolly easy ! 
I put it down to my years, which sometimes impose even on 
their owner, and make him fancy he is grown up. . . .' 

Meanwhile De Morgan was offered the degree of LL.D. by 
the University of Yale, and Professor Phelps wrote to urge him 
to come to New Haven to receive it ; but he rephed : — 

William De Morgan to Professor Lyon Phelps. 

* ViALE Milton 19, 

' Florence, Italy, 

' May 24, 1910. 
* Dear Prof. Phelps, — 

' . . . Did I write to you of our misfortunes of last autumn ? 
Not in full, anyhow. It came about thus : we were just leaving our old 
home, which was on the point of being pulled down, when my wife met 
with an accident — fell down in the street, and was brought home with 
a dislocated shoulder. The case was most grievously mismanaged, and 
months of trying anxiety have followed during which I have done little 
or no work. She may never be fit for a visit to the States, and I should 
not come without her. Neither am I over-fit myself, just at present — 
that maj^ pass off. I am only 70, so far, and a good many folk live another 
decade or two, after that. However, subordinate reasons why I couldn't 
come hardly count, with a big insuperable in the foreground — nevertheless 
there are plenty, in the background. There is a house, standing chaotic, 
in Chelsea (England) waiting to be got in order. A nice confusion we have 
been in, with the old home of 20 years broken up, ructions with builders 
of a new one, broken limbs — such a combination ! 

' My wife uses the arm amazingly, and a Swedish masseuse really 
seems to be bringing about a gradual reduction of the bone to its place. 
But it isn't landed, yet a while, and till it is, I cannot certainly desert 
Mrs. i^.Iicawber, neither can she travel about, however great the temptation. 

' There is very little margin for an increase in this latter article, after 
your invitation and the delightful latitude you offer. Thank you for it 
heartily. 

' A short book of mine — only 400 pages of 350 words each — will appear 
in August, sa3^ It is an experiment for me — quite unlike all the others. 
I couldn't tell at first what period it would turn out. It decided on the 
Restoration — and is handicapped by its author's ignorance of that date. 
However, that won't matter for readers who know less — and those who 
really are well up in Pepys and Evelyn will have to be forgiving — I have 
altered historical fact to suit the story, more than once — I shall be curious 
to see the result. 

' I am sorry this letter is not what it ought to be, a promise to turn up 
in a month at New Haven, subject to the Comet having spared us. 

' Always yours, 

' Wm. De Morgan.' 

' I am dreadfully sorry,' De Morgan wrote on the abandon- 
ment of this pleasant scheme, ' and should be still more so if 
I were young enough to do justice to my visit — and I may add 
strong enough, for I am feeling very shaken by my last six months. 
Better times may be in store, and I may yet have the happiness 
of shaking hands with my American friends, and looking back 



•BLIND JIM' AND ' LUCINDA * 331 

to it for the rest of my speU on this side.' But when he hesitated, 
Heinemann put the final veto on the suggestion. ' You don't 
know what your reception would be in America,' he urged. 
' If it got known you were going there you would be greeted 
with such an ovation and endless hospitality that you would 
never stand it ; and the books would suffer.' 

' I suppose,' acquiesced De Morgan, ' you mean that they 
would kill the poor old goose that lays the addled eggs ! ' 

Nevertheless he wrote with deep feeling : — 

' It has been an extraordinary pleasure to me to find that, 
Britisher born and raised as I am, I can still find American 
readers. I assure you that the receipt of assurances to that 
effect from remote regions out West, that were still in the wilds 
when I was old enough to read Fenimore Cooper and Catlin, 
have been to me a matter of rejoicing and bewilderment. All 
the more because it shows that Politics and Geography have 
completely failed in making foreigners of the two halves of a 
divided race that speak the same language, and will do so as 
long as each adopts the neologisms of the other as fast as they 
come from the mint.' 

Throughout this date, under singularly adverse conditions — 
filled with anxiety about his wife, turned out of his old home, 
and living in an hotel in Queen's Gate— De Morgan was struggling 
to finish the novel respecting which he wrote to Professor Phelps, 
and which he usually referred to as ' the Duel Story ' ; but 
which was afterwards published under the title of An Affair 
of Dishonour. On February 19, 1909, he wrote : ' I wish I 
could finish it before I go to Florence, but oh dear ! how my 
poor old head has suffered from recent events. I'm trying 
very hard — only the odds ! My word ! ! — I don't suppose 
the book will begin destroying its author's reputation before 
next Christmas.' The summary of this story, written by himself, 
was as follows : — 

' The story — so we are informed by a gentleman who has read it in 
proof — runs somewhat as follows : The hero, a dissolute married country 
gentleman, Sir Oliver Raydon, has inveigled from her home Luciiida, the 
beautiful daughter of a neighbouring squire — whom he kills in the duel 
which results naturally from his conduct. This is scene one. 

' He cannot bring himself to the confession of what has happened, and 
to conceal it from Lucinda, spirits her away to a lonely residence by the 
sea, Kipps Manor, near Sole Bay. Here a naval battle comes off within 
sight of land, and a survivor who is brought ashore proves to be Lucinda's 
brother back from Virginia, but blinded by an explosion. He does not 
recognize his sister, who conceals her identity. Meanwhile Oliver, till 
now a mere brute and debauchee, has a new experience. He falls in love 
with his victim. His reluctance that she should know of her father's 
death increases. But it comes out, for a discarded mistress of his elicits 
it by means of witchcraft from a groom who had been present at the duel. 



332 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

and makes him recount the whole affair in a sort of mesmeric trance tc 
Lucinda. This leads to an Sclaircissement. Lucinda returns to hei 
father's house, and is followed by Oliver, now frantic to retain her love, 
and constructing all sorts of excuses for himself. He fights a duel with 
her brother whose eyesight has come back to him to suit the convenience 
of the story, but falls in a fit on his own sword. His epileptic attacks 
enter into the story, as also a disposition to walk in his sleep. Then there 
are dreams and ghosts and a witch-trial and the Plague and — oh dear ! — 
all sorts of things. Plenty for four-and-sixpence in all conscience I 

' But such of Mr. De Morgan's readers as consider Porky Owls or 
Lizerann or their equivalent de rigiieur, had better skip this book and wait 
for the next. It is an experiment of its author's, and may prove too great 
a trial for their patience.' 

While this story was in process of construction, De Morgan 
had at one time intended that, after the arrival of Lucinda's 
brother, Ohver should attempt to get rid of the inconvenient 
visitor by drastic measures : — 

' It is really impossible to have any clear idea of the story till it ends,' 
he wrote to Heinemann. ' Oliver, I think, knew that when the brother 
recovered he would have to fight him, and would have killed him by 
poison — or somehow — but has a fit at a crisis and spoils it, and is afraid 
to try again. Then he gets both up to London in the Plague, and gets 
the brother shut into an infected house, and not allowed out by the Authori- 
ties — he pretends he's sorry — all sorts of fun ! ' 

Later, when it was pointed out to him that there were two 
battles of Sole Bay, one in 1665 and one in 1672, he confessed 
that he was not quite clear to which he had intended to refer. 
' Of course my story used history as it liked . . . the fact is 
I have alwa3^s taken full advantage of the painter's and the 
poet's quidlibet audeiidi — and I shall continue on the same 
lines. WTiat use is History if one may not pervert it in Fiction. 
After all, one dt)os the same by Fact ! ' 

But the crux of the story, he always maintained, lay in 
the fact that the beauty and innocence of Lucinda remained 
untarnished by her contact with her betrayer, till the purity 
of her own soul ennobled the baseness of Oliver. ' The bits 
I like best,' he said, ' are the incidents at Kipps Manor ; but 
the chief point of the story is the fact that Oliver falls in love 
with his victim, and is comically afraid that his love for her 
will not grow cold soon enough not to prove an embarrassment 
when she finds out, as she eventually must, that he killed her 
father. ... I am constantly surprised that Sir Oliver doesn't 
make Lucinda sick of him — but then I am alive to the difference 
between her and myself. Won't she hate him neither, one of 
these days ! ' 

Before its publication he wrote to Heinemann : — 

' I see an advantage in bringing out now a distinct variation on the 
*liree published, and filling out an interim. The Press will probably let 
ly at it. But when tlie one I am two-thirds through comes, they will 



'BLIND JIM' AND ' LUCINDA ' 333 

say : " Mr. De Morgan has done wisely to take our advice, and return to 
his old muttons." ' 

And the Press did ' let fly at it.' The novel, both in matter 
and manner, was a complete departure from all De Morgan's 
previous work, and, as such, was received by the public with 
undisguised disappointment and abuse. ' A perfectly good 
cat that I have found in the literary ashpan,' observes one critic 
with a fine literary sense ; ' it differs from everything that has 
come to us previously from the author's pen, as lifeless clay 
differs from living spirit.' Not only, to the annoyance of his 
readers, had De Morgan abandoned the Victorian period, his 
cockneyism, his colloquialism, and what a reviewer called ' his 
usual philosophic-humorous-reminiscent vein ' which they had 
learnt to look for from his pen and to delight in, but, with a 
versatility wholly unexpected, he had adopted the speech, the 
mannerisms, the perspective of the seventeenth century, and 
therewith had woven a prose-poem, romantic, sombre and 
powerful. 

' Possibly it is his finest work,' wrote Mr. Ellis in the Fort- 
nightly. ' It is not an historical romance in the ordinary sense 
of the word . . . it is an historical picture of the time it relates 
to, and I know of no other work of fiction in this category, except 
Esmond, which has so much "atmosphere" about it, for the 
characters not only speak and act but think in the manner of 
their period. ... It is like a bizarre dream from the past, 
suggested and accompanied by some electrical storm outside in 
the night.' 

Yet when some one described this book to De Morgan as a 
tour de force, with his usual diffidence he replied doubtfully, 
' Say, rather, a tour de faiblesse.' Ultimately, however, the 
reviewers discovered that ' It is just what we should have expected 
of De Morgan — the Unexpected ' ; while it sold with a rapidity 
which out-distanced its predecessors, and soon carried conviction 
of its success to the mind of its author. 

' Ain't I satisfied neither with the Press notices ! ' De Morgan wrote 
to Heinemann later. ' See the beauty of a surprise. If Byron had written 
a Railway Guide and Bradshaw an Epic poem, each would have sold 
quicker than type would permit ! 

' I only believe in one thing that helps the circulation of books — their 
contents apart, of course. It is heated controversy in the Press about 
their merits. I should read the book the Spectator and the Academy came 
to blows about, though I might go no further than deciding to read the 
one both praised.' 

So strong was his conviction on this point, however, that 
he wrote a scathing review of his own book, and was with diffi- 
culty dissuaded from publishing it. One incident, however, 
connected with this story interested him greatly. 



334 WILLIAM AxND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

In An Affair of Dishonour a large portion of the plot takes 
place on the desolate coast of Suffolk, in the salt marshes north 
of Dunwich, an eerie, solitary region, where De Morgan depicted 
the imaginary house Kipps Manor to which Oliver took Lucinda. 
After reading De Morgan's graphic description of this place and 
its surroundings, several correspondents at once wrote to point 
out that the Manor in question had been identified as The Stone 
House in the neighbourhood of the Suffolk marshland ; and to 
Mr. Ellis, who discussed the question in the Fortnightly, De 
Morgan replied : — 

' Over forty years ago I spent a month at Southwold, and 
heard all about Dunwich and the ancient port, and saw and 
enjoyed the neighbourhood. I must have retained a vivid 
recollection of what I saw, having not only succeeded in the 
landscape, but popped a house down on it that is pure inven- 
tion ! . . . I ouglit to try to identify Kipps Manor ; I have 
no doubt that it is somewhere there and that the whole thing 
happened. The Stone House at Dingle looks so very likely. 
It is the very place that was hanging in my mind at the time 
of writing — only / am absolutely sure that I never visited it.' 

About this time De Morgan was asked to pronounce an 
opinion on what he termed ' another " Affair of Dishonour," ' 
the exclusion of women from the franchise. Long years before, 
in his bachelor days, discussing the question with a lady, also 
unmarried, he had suggested a happy solution. ' I think none 
but married people should have votes. Then, at a General 
Election, the married people who hadn't got on together would 
vote on opposite sides ; and thus the world would come to be 
governed by married people who did get on together ; and who, 
after all, are not the worst part of the Community ! Thus, by 
a process of natural selection, the governing body would be all 
the contented, amiable people ! ' 

But at a date when the question was rending the social and 
political world with a rancour now, happily, of the past, for 
some time he maintained silence. In answer to a solemn petition 
that he would throw the weight of his verdict into the scale in 
favour of the feminine vote, he responded boyishly, ' I can't 
mix myself up in matters political — I should bust ! ' Never- 
theless, deeply interested in the question, as his parents had 
been before him, he held it to be ' a definite question of right 
and wrong,' and some of his royalties found their way into 
the coffers of the W.S.P.U. 

' The plain, bald truth [he wrote] is that Man, Nature's " last work who 
seemed so fair," seems to have fallen rather below the mark in fairness in 
this matter, and in fact to cut a very sorry figure. The " Splendid purpose 
in his eyes " seems to have been the purpose of devoting money taken 



'BLIND JIM' AND ' LUCINDA ' 335 

from the reluctant pockets of women to helping the democracy, of which 
he is sole demos, out of a difficulty, and depriving them of any share in 
the rights and privileges he has claimed for himself in return. Let him 
free himself from this iniquity ! ' 

And even when the destruction of the contents of pillar- 
boxes proved a shock to his peace-loving nature, while depre- 
cating the manoeuvres of the miUtant suffragists, he viewed the 
matter without any sex-bias. 

' I am well aware [he wrote] that an attempt to burn down a theatre — 
if made by a sane person — deserves to be condemned as diabolical. At 
any rate, I condemn it as such myself. But I am not aware that the 
ignition of Nottingham Castle had any claim to be considered celestial, 
and that was the example held up by implication as a legitimate proof of 
the political earnestness for the franchise of males desirous of a share in 
the management of their own affairs ! ' 

Finally, unable any longer to hold silence, he vented his 
opinions unhesitatingly in the Press, while to Mr. Lansbury he 
wrote a letter, the conclusion of which struck a note destined 
to be tragically prophetic : — 

' . . . One word more on another point. A flagrant injustice, due to 
the exclusion of women from the electorate has to my thinking received 
less attention than it deserves. 

' I refer to men's justification of a monopoly of legislation on the 
ground that military service falls solely on them. Man, in England, 
boasts, somewhat loudly, of his superiority in this respect. But he won't 
submit to Conscription, not he ! — that is " un-English " ; — still he is 
ready to die, if necessary, facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers 
and the temples of his gods. It won't come to that, however, he feels 
confident, because there's the Home Fleet, and Tommy Atkins and the 
Territorials are quite strong enough to give a good account of any straggling 
expedition that gets past that obstacle. He will never be called on to 
give an exhibition of his prowess. Meanwhile liis conscience is clear, 
for he paj'-s the piper ! 

' Does he ? Ask Mr. Lloyd George, whom I suppose to be the meta- 
phorical piper in this case, what share of the bawbees in his sporran have 
come from the pockets of women. 

' At least let the wives and mothers of the proposed corpses in the next 
War have a voice in the National decisions that relate to it ! Let them 
have their say in a s^^stem which bids fair — if the Devil breaks loose again 
in Europe — and I don't trust him ! — to send their husbands and sons to 
be shot down like a battue of pheasants, before they have learnt to handle 
a gun. 

' At any rate, do not let us be influenced by considerations which have 
nothing to do with the subject. Forget those pillar-boxes 1 * 



CHAPTER XV 

•UNLIKELY STORIES' AND 'GHOSTS' 

1910-1914 

AMONG the letters which reached De Morgan in igio was 
one from a former schoolmate of whom he had lost sight 
during half a century, and who on hearing from him wrote 
back delightedly : ' You must know that since I received your 
letter, I went out and invested in five cents' worth of marbles, 
and hunted up another hoy of my own age to have a game — it 
so impressed me with the feeling that I was again in Gower 
Street ! ' Shortly afterwards, he received a letter from a cousin 
of whom he had lost sight for a similar period, a son of his father's 
sister nee EHza De Morgan, to whom he wrote in reply : — 

William De Morgan to the Rev. Augustus De Morgan Hensley. 

' August igth, 1 910. 
' My dear Gus, — 
' Fifty years are nothing. Time is only an abstraction. I remember 
Camden Street now quite vividly — more so than some later whereaboutses. 

' I can remember where the piano stood that you and Alice played 
duets on, in the parlour with 3 windows looking out on the garden. [A 
plan of the room and furniture is appended.] Probably you played the 
" Witches in Macbeth " or " The Manly Heart with love o'erfliowing " — I 
remember both as strong features of her repertoire. 

I have by me memorials of that time that I believe you will remember — 
two water-colour copies of my mother's (at XX). Also (only it has gone 
to be repaired) the table with queer feet my father wTote all his books 
at. It clung to me through all my endless changes of purpose and employ- 
ment, and stood for years in lumber rooms. Now it is to be resuscitated 
for me to try to write more novels on. 

' You know, I dare say, how queer a life I have had. It was towards 
the end of that Camden St. time that I was seized with the unhappy 
fancy that I had a turn for the Fine Arts. I paid no heed to the wisest 
and best man I have ever known — my father of course — and went my own 
headstrong way. His words to me were, "If you work hard and read, 
Willy, especially Latin and Greek, you will live to write something worth 
reading. But as to painting, how can I tell knowing nothing of it." 
Well I I went my own way and wasted an odd 40 or 50 years. All one 
can say is, things have turned out better than I deserved. I put a good 
deal of mj^self into Charles Heath in Alice-for-Short. 

' I have never heard of you without deciding that I must make an 
efiort and put an end to our curious and reasonless divarication. It has 

336 



'UNLIKELY STORIES' AND 'GHOSTS' 337 

been so with so many of my early associations from which (or whom) I 
have parted absolutely without a trace of the usual tifE that is responsible 
for family dispersal. I think lazy self-absorption in the fad of the moment 
has been my contribution to the results. 

' My books and the correspondence they bring remind me every day 
what a-many links I have allowed to snap. 

' A school-fellow of the Camden Street days wrote to me lately from 
Canada saying (as you did) that I should be surprised to be called " dear 
Willy " ; quite fifty years had passed but that was the name he remembered 
me by. He's an old soldier, at Toronto. Then, a year ago, a letter came 
to me from Monte Carlo from a lady who had been reading my books. 
She apologized for writing on the ground that her husband was a second 
cousin of mine. She was Mrs. Underwood French — our grandmother's 
sister's daughter-in-law. Are you learned enough in your family t.o be 
able to feel at home over this ? I saw them in London after. He also 
remembered Camden Street and Alice. He gave me a family tree of the 
second cousin generation, seventy or eighty families in all — mercy on us ! 

' I dare say, though, you gave up your mother's family in despair if 
ever you tried to elucidate it. I have a book about it in my father's 
handwriting that would interest you, and you might be able to contribute 
traditions. 

' I used to hear of you in your Haileybury days from Crom Price, who 
was, or had been, a classical tutor there. 

' My wife and I live now more in Florence than in London, but we have 
lost so many friends there by death of late that the place is a sad one, 
compared to what it was twenty years since when we wintered there first. 

' I am only just getting to work again after months of disturbance 
(my wife's accident made hay of all last winter and much spring). 

' You have a claim of seniority (dwindling with time, as it always 
does) and if there is no chance of you in Chelsea, I must cast about for 
opportunities — and till I find one, remain in defiance of those 60 years. 

' Afftly. yours, 

' Wm. De Morgan. 

' Two ancient letters I came upon to-day — one from our Granny ; the 
other, from my mother, is one written to Alice (aged 4) after she went to bed. 

' I expect the references to interest you as they do me. One cannot 
use the word amuse about old letters. I always feel sad over the merriest 
of them.' 

It was not till the autumn of 1910 that De Morgan and his 
wife were settled in their new home, 127 Church Street, where 
they had characteristically purchased two old houses, and at 
great expense and unnecessary trouble turned them into one 
somewhat inconvenient new one. When a friend condoled 
with them on the loss of the loved and vanished Vale, De Morgan 
at once replied contentedly : ' We have decided not to take 
that view at all. We walk there sometimes and are verj'- much 
interested in what is going on. The mulberry trees belonging 
to our old garden are still standing.' 

Further to reconcile them to their new surroundings, they 
had purchased an Angelus. Both passionately fond of music, 
and insatiable attendants at concerts, neither could spare the 
time necessary to become musicians ; therefore despite his 
life-long devotion to the Waldstein Sonata, De Morgan, playing 



338 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

on his new acquisition daily, declared that it had first revealed 
Beethoven to him. To Professor Mackail he wrote : — 

' 127 Church Street, 

' Sept. igih, 1910. 
' My dear Jack, — 

' I thought you weren't back — (I hope your quaUfications will en- 
able you to appreciate that couplet). So I have not been round your way. 
' We have got settled in here at last, i.e., we have got to the period in 
which the electric bells begin to get out of order. The hot water apparatus 
hasn't begun transgressing yet — it will. . . . 

' You must come along some day next week and see the house. 
' You must promise not to look at our Angelus we've bought, only 
that mustn't be held to imply any contract on my part not to look at your 
Angela. 

' I am glad you are looking me out blunders in a A.F.O.D. [An Affair 
of Dishonour] — there are plenty. A little before the last re-issue of 
I.N.C.H.A. [// Never Can Happen Again] I sent off forty-two correc- 
tions of slips, large and small. This book will sell more than the others. 
' Our loves to you — extremely. 

' Yours faithfully, and no 'umbugging, 

' Wm. De Morgan.' 

Later he wrote to Miss Holiday : ' We have got a new Erard 
for the Pianola to play on — the P. much prefers it to its first 
love ' ; and Miss Hohday, going to inspect the new acquisition, 
wrote of this visit : — 

' I was having luncheon with them at the time when the 
Crippen murder was engrossing public attention. It certainly 
was as Dickens says " a highly popular murder," but I thought 
it extremely horrid and avoided the long reports of it ; so that 
it gave me rather a shock to find De Morgan as keenly interested 
in it as anyone, till I suddenly realized that to him, the great 
novelist, it presented itself as an enormously interesting study, 
both in regard to its motive and its execution, I remember 
we had some jugged rabbit for luncheon ; it was rather a mys- 
terious dish, but not unpalatable ; De Morgan, however, took a 
great dislike to it, vowing that Crippen must have had a hand 
in providing its dismembered ingredients ; and referred to it 
afterwards in a letter in very abusive and apologetic terms.' 

William De Morgan to Winifred Holiday. 

' Nov. 15th, 1910. 
* My dear Winnie, — ■ 

' The reason I am hurrying o£E the volumes I tried to inflict upon 
you is that I really seriously do want to hear that you have survived the 
garbage you got to eat here. 

' / say it was cat. Do write and say you are doing well. 
' I have just made such a good joke — like them your daddy and me 
and poor Simeon Solomon used to make in the days of old. 
' Q. Why is the Seine unlike any other river ? 
' Ans. Because it's never the Seine two days together. 
' Of course you'll try to make believe that this is along of that there 
Angelus. 



•UNLIKELY STORIES' AND 'GHOSTS' 339 

'Nov. i8th. 

' It turns out that a " Scotch Hare " (which was the cat) is a specimen 
of rabbit that the best of cooks may jug in vain. As long as it wasn't 
j ugged CHppeniity I am satisfied. "We have all had something to eat since. 

' Your afiectionate Angelus, 
' William De Morgan.' 

' I wonder why other folks' garbage is always so much nicer 
than our garbage ? ' he observed tentatively one day, looking 
round his well-covered dinner-table. In regard, however, to 
the interest which he exhibited in the Crippen trial, it may be 
remarked that Burke, De Quincey, Tennyson, and Jowett all 
frankly admitted the fascination which they found in following 
the details of a great murder drama. 

That same month, De Morgan was invited to be the guest 
of honour at a dinner given by the Society of Authors, but 
his distress was great when he discovered that he was expected 
to make a speech. ' Partly for physical, partly for intellectual, 
and partly for selfish reasons '—he explained, ' but very little 
for the last — I am obliged to refuse anything which involves 
speech — am doing so every day, and feeling ashamed of myself 
and small.' This time no plausible means of escape presented 
itself ; but so nervous was he that he begged his wife and his 
relations not to be present on the dreaded evening, lest he should 
disgrace himself by breaking down. Subsequently he wrote to 
his brother-in-law : — 

William De Morgan to Spencer Pickering, F.R.S. 

' Nov. lyth, 1910. 
' Dear Spencer, — 

' The dinner was just like any other huge dinner, except that 
sometimes the grub is good, and other places are no criterion of the Criterion 
where it is always bad. 

' I had misapprehended my importance in the concern, and found 
myself painfully conspicuous. I am not used to the sky. 

' I think my speech was a failure, but it was so ill-delivered that people 
may think it would have been good if they could have heard it. It will 
come out complete in The Author — that is, a faked version of it, as near as 
I could recollect, with some things I meant to say and forgot. 

' I'm very glad Evelyn didn't go — I should have busted up altogether. 
' I complained to one or two friends in the audience, after, of their 
not making a row when I stuttered, to drown my confusion. But they 
said, " We were so anxious to hear what you were going to say ! " 

' Evelyn says I oughtn't to have burnt a feeble portrait of myself in 
a top liLit in the Graphic — but have sent it on — but really even the patience 
of a Saint has its limits. I'm a Saint (I'm something else if I'm not).' 

A fortnight later, in regard to an address dehvered by Pro- 
fessor Mackail, De Morgan wrote enthusiastically, echoing once 
more, unchanged, the sentiments of earlier years : — 

' Dec. 8th, 1910, 

'127 Church Street. 
' My dear Jack, — 

' Now that I've been reading you for an hour instead of writing me 
I can write heartfelt thanks to you for delivering the address at Birmingham. 



)40 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

' I think if some dozens of parties who call themselves Socialists could 
be strangled, I would join the communion of the remainder without pester- 
ing it to know what Socialism is — (after all that is merely an Academical 
matter — and we don't know what anything else is, to speak of !). 

' I don't sec anything to quarrel with in it as you seem to define it 
DQ P. 26 except that on those terms so many people's Galileanism has 
forestalled it — and in two syllables longer if you come to that ! 

' Adieu till June — unless you come to Florence — we can put you up, 
as Cluristie and Manson said to the modern picture. 

' Margot's and yours affectionately, 

' Wm. De Morgan.' 

The Christmas which followed was the first De Morgan had 
spent in England for many years, but his health no longer 
gave cause for anxiety. For six months, however, owing to 
the unsettled conditions consequent upon his change of home, 
he had been unable to write a line : ' A really good thing ! ' 
he explained, ' as during the last five years I have published 
over a million and a quarter words ! ' Throughout 191 1, while 
working at a long novel which he had for some time had on hand, 
at Heinemann's request he prepared for the Press a short book 
which, at first called Bianca, was finally published in 1912 undei' 
the title of A Likely Story. ' Compared with Joe it is a meni 
anecdote,' he wrote cheerfully, ' to my thinking, the shortnes5 
of the story should cover a multitude of sins.' It had, in fact, 
been originally intended by him for a Magazine article, but, 
elaborated with fresh material, it had some years previously been 
shown to Mr. Lawrence, whose adverse criticism drew from its 
author the most cordial gratitude. 

' As to the actual story,' De Morgan explained, ' I seriously 
thought of calling it An Experimeni m Nonsense.' 

' I have heard (or shall some day !) a story about an eminent 
author who was discovered weeping on a seat on Chelsea Embank- 
ment, and when they asked him or her, " Why do you weep. 
Sir or Madam ? " replied : " Because other parties don't like 
my tit-bits, Ohonarie ! " I believe he really voiced the experi- 
ence of a-many book butterflies of my sort ! I'll tell you which 
bits I really hked in this piece of gammon, (i) Sairah [the maid 
of all work] ; (2) Sir Stopleigh's family reminiscences ; (3) 
Madeline's talks with the dawg.' 

One thing, however, in connexion with this book puzzled 
him greatly. ' I am anxious to dress one of the characters in 
a coat which will denote affluence,' he said, ' so I w^ent into a 
fur-shop to ask if a musquash coat was expensive for me to give 
my heroine ; and the Zoological knowledge of the shopkeepers 
astonished me. What sort of animal is a ' seal-coney,' or a 
mole-musquash ? and, above all, what is a ' conej-leopard ' ? 

The present writer explained these knotty points to the 
best of her ability. De Morgan, it should be mentioned, had, 
on occasions, compared her to Miss Larkins who ' had a bright 



'UNLIKELY STORIES' AND 'GHOSTS' 341 

taste in bonnets ' ; and when the first copy of A Likely 
Story reached her, it bore the inscription in the author's writing : — 

' From a seal-colour musquash to a magenta bird, of Paradise.' 

This novel, which was dedicated to ' The Scientific Enquirer,' 
has been described as ' a compound of satire and the super- 
natural.' To that section of the public who had complained 
bitterly of the absence in An Affair of Dishonour of the ' Early 
Victorianism ' and the ' suburbanity ' which had proved such 
a great attraction in his previous works, A Likely Story is de- 
scribed by the^author as an ' honest, if humble attempt, to satisfy 
all parties. ... It combines on one canvas the story of a family 
incident that is purely Victorian with another of the Italian 
cinquecento, without making any further demand on human 
powers of belief than that a picture is made to talk, I have also 
introduced a very pretty suburb, Coombe, as the residence of 
the earhest Victorian Aunt, to my thinking, that my pen is 
responsible for. . . .' Both this aunt and niece, it may be 
added, served to furnish a delicate piece of satire upon the tone 
adopted by many women of that date towards those who differed 
from themselves on the vexed question of female suffrage, especi- 
ally ' Aunt Priscilla,' who, able to define to a nicety the proper 
sphere of her sex, ' objected to anyone leaving the groove, even 
with the motive of pushing others back into it.' 

Nevertheless, despite many exquisite bits of writing, the 
book, as a whole, was unconvincing. The constant intrusion 
of modern life and modern remarks into an atmosphere highly 
charged with a grim mediccvahsm seemed to interrupt the most 
absorbing part of the narrative, and, despite the ingenuousness 
of the telling, to militate against its reahsm. The fact was that 
the ' trail ' of the reviewer ' was over it all.' The author, in an 
amiable anxiety to please the Press and the Public, was en- 
deavouring to mould his talent to suit the ' many-headed.' ' A 
slump from a quarter to a twentieth of a million words marks a 
pov;erful self-restraint on the part of my " cacoethes scribendi," ' 
he urged. ' I do not understand that anyone has, so far, pro- 
pounded the doctrine that a short story cannot be too short ! ' 
In extenuation of the improbability of the tale he, however, 
pointed out ' what a flat tragedy Hamlet would have been 
without its fundamental ghost,' and he pleaded for ' like rights 
for the tittlebat and the leviathan.' In consequence he received 
several letters addressed to ' WiUiam Tittlebat De Morgan,' one 
of which remarks : ' There is one quality which I am sure no 
novel of yours will ever lack ; I mean its " de Morganism — shall 
I write it " dem-Organism " ? — and so long as it is dem-organic, 
I don't much mind what other quaUties its possessor lacks, as I, 
personally, suffer from chronic De Morganitis.' 



342 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

Two events of this year were a great pleasure to him — one 
was that in Florence, in April, he met his hitherto unknown 
correspondent and critic. Professor Phelps ; the other that, in 
the following Octol:)er, he at last made the acquaintance of his 
literary godson, Mr. Louis Joseph Vance. ' I was beginning 
to wonder what had become of my old correspondent ! ' he 
wrote joyfully on receiving the news of Mr. Vance's presence 
in London. ' Don't call — come to dinner, and dress or not 
exactly as convenient — we are the most elastic people in Chelsea 
on that score ! ' But Mr. Vance was determined not to miss 
the chance of creating a good impression : ' I shall pretty myself 
up fit to kill ! ' he rejoined. 

At the close of 1912, De Morgan wrote to Professor Phelps : — 

' 127 Church Street, 
' Chelsea, S.W., 
' Dec. 31, 1912. 
' My dear Prof. Phelps, — 

' For some time past I have been wishing you the happiest and most 
prosperous of Xmasses and New Years ; as the last is to hand, I see no 
reason for observing secrecy any longer, and send a line to say so — adding 
that my wishes hold good for the remaining 365 days of the year. 

' What a funny thing language is ! To wish in this context means to 
express a wish — just as to belfeve means to profess a belief. 

' I have nothing to write about, except to thank you cordially for your 
book on education, though any book on that subject is a standing reproach 
on my bookshelves for my own want of it. Since I took to book\\Titing 
this want has been more and more borne in upon me with every fresh 
pen-dip of Stephens's Blue Black — I can fall out this page though, with a 
discovery I have made that will interest you — I have found that English 
poetry from Chaucei to 1750 circa is worth exactly twenty shillings ! 
For — 'listen ! A while back a line ran into my head from a buried past : 
" The ratiocinations specious 
Of Aristotle and Smiglesius " ; 
and, although some one said Hudibras, I said Swift, and got at the Dean's 
poems to prove it, but failed — 'Couldn't find it ! — was set a-thinking of 
Anderson's British Poets in my father's library — wished I had a copy 
now — set a bookseller to hunt me up a copy, who found me one, for one 
pound, in the original board, with rough uncut edges, that had apparently 
been book-shelved since it left the printers — not a page spoiled ! I opened 
at hazard — Swift's Poems, and before my eyes the italics " Homo est 
raiione praevditum ! " next door to the above coiiplet. Now wasn't that 
a funny chance ? 

' "What were the odds when a century and more ago some fox-hunting 
squire put that book up in his library to help him towards Parnassus, that 
/ should be the first to open the copy ? However, thereat speculation 
stands aghast. 

' Excuse this new year's nonsense — and accept best of wishes from 
self and wife for 191 3. 

' Yours always, 

' Wm. De Morgan.' 

About this date De Morgan was also much interested to meet 
Mrs. E. M. Ward, the mother of Sir Leslie Ward, who had been a 
resident in Fitzroy Square during the period when he had been 



'UNLIKELY STORIES' AND 'GHOSTS' 343 

working at stained glass in the basement of No. 40. ' It is funny 
to me,' he wrote to Mr. Ellis, respecting this meeting, ' to think 
that Fitzroy Square was over live years t'other side of half-way 
back to my baby recollections of Fordhook — say 1845 — 1870 — 
1912 — very rough figures.' Yet such unavoidable recognition 
of the advance of ' dull Eld ' engendered but little regret on his 
pdrt, even as he continued to contemplate with unruffled equa- 
nimity the prospective approach of that companion Form ' with 
Darkness round its brows.' ' I shall burn out without spitting 
and fizzing, I hope,' he makes one of his fictitious characters 
remark contentedly. ' Still, it's one of the quarrels I have with 
my Creator that, with all the unlimited resources of Omnipo- 
tence, He could not contrive some less awkward and repulsive 
way of winding up Life than Death. And to make matters 
worse, one is decently interred. It is no use pretending that 
God did not make undertakers, because they have just as good 
a claim to be considered His Creatures as Members of Society ! ' 
And again in this connexion he wrote : — 

' I long ago gave up paying the slightest attention to diseases' names. 
There are really only two sorts, those that kill, and those that permit 
of a modus vivendi. I prefer the first. The modus is never a comfortable 
one for their . . . client — suppose we say — however satisfactory to them- 
selves. But what fun it would be to be a pain in the head of somebody 
one hated ! How one would come on, and get worse, and never yield 
to treatment ! ' 

Meanwhile throughout the winter of 1912-13, he was working 
wearily at a novel which seemed to him interminable. ' One 
volume is past praying for ! ' he wrote to Heinemann, ' but by 
all means let us pray ! I think I shall take to writing Magazine 
Serials with lots of Pirates and Revolvers,' Later he pointed 
out : ' It can never pay you at six bob. It is really the equivalent 
of three six-bobbers. ... It is too long for its merits.' At 
last he observed in desperation : ' I really think this awful 
book had better be hung up until some way presents itself of 
dealing with it. . . . You know what / should do — I should 
print a shilHng sample and issue the remainder if called for ! ' 

The story in question, which was then called The Twms oj 
Darenth Mill, turns on the separation for sixty years of twin 
sisters, and their discovery as octogenarians that each had been 
deceived by a dastardly trick into thinking the other dead. The 
subsidiary characters, the beautiful Lady Gwen and her lover ; 
the elder couple, the Honble, Percy Pellew and Miss Smith- 
Dickensen ; the inhabitants of Ancaster Towers, from Lady 
Ancaster downwards ; the denizens of Sapp's Court — Uncle Mo', 
the old prize-fighter, Aunt M'riar, his meek daughter, married 
to the villain of the piece, Mr. Wix of many aliases, the little 
children Dave and Dolly, in whose tiny hands are the threads 
of Destiny ; even Julia, the barmaid, and Michael Ragstroar, the 



344 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

inimitable street gamin, all were instinct with life and — so thought 
many — with immortality. But De Morgan, weary —ith the 
strain of eight years' incessant work, could see no good in the 
production, of which he said that he had written 30,000 words 
before any plot unfolded itself ; and the necessity for compression 
harassed him. 

William De Morgan to William Heinemann. 

' July 12th, 1913. 

' I can't tell you how grateful I am to you for wading all through this 
enormous book. It is an indescribable relief to me to have the detailed 
impression of another mind. 

' I go rather further than you do in the same direction. I want the 
whole book rewritten, with another subject. 

' The difficulty is, not in amputating the hands of Briareus, but in 
taking up the arteries. And it is an instance in which no author's morti- 
fied vanity can come in — the seeming superfluity of Mrs. Tapping and ISIrs. 
Riley. There — I can cut them out easily ! 

' But I shrink from Chapter XXXIII. 

' As for the Dickensen-Pellew business, they could be ripped out — by 
Michaelmas perhaps ! — 'I have no personal objection to their coming out 
as I could make a story of them, and use everything. But I have 3 objec- 
tions otherwise — thus : 

' (i) The removal of the contrast between the two ways of making 
love would damage the story. 

' (2) I want them as explanatories in the tag-end chapter. 

' (3) My wife is devoted to them — says they are one of the best parts. ^ 

' Let us face the abominable fact boldly ! I have written a beastly 
book that won't go into one volume. To reduce it (to one vol. point) is 
a more troublesome task by far than writing a new book, and would 
take longer. 

' I believe the underlying fact to be that the subject is essentially 
impossible. It is an experiment that has failed. I suggest hanging it 
up — and if it ever comes out it should be under the title of " An Unpub- 
lished Novel." ' 

The subsequent progress of the work is marked by a series 
of running comments also addressed by the author to the pub- 
lisher. 

' August 5th. I am just grinding out the pages of this d — d story. 

* August loth. If brought out as two books it can run thus : 

The Twins of Daren th Mill. 
Vol. I. A Shortage of Mud. 
Vol. II. When Ghost meets Ghost. 
' By doing this we shall avoid the odd titles as the current description 
of the book, and yet it will, to my thought, benefit by their rumness. 
They are strictly in order, as the whole evolution of things turns on that 
dollop of clay in the second chapter, and the purpose of the book, if any, 
turns on the resemblance of the two old ladies to a pair of chance Cimerians, 
old acquaintances on this side of Styx, who turn up on t'other. 

' I well weighed your suggestion of removing the Pellews, but found 

* ' The love-affairs of the Hon. Percy Pellew and IMiss Smith-Dickensen 
attain a plane of high comedy worthy of George Meredith at his best.' — 
Criticism in The Times, 




Hklen of Tboy 

' Was this the face that launched a thousand ships 
And burnt the topmost towers of Ilium ? " 

Painted by Evelyn De Morgan in 1898. 

[In the possession of Mrs. Stirling. 



'UNLIKELY STORIES' AND 'GHOSTS' 345 

the task of doing so would be too stiff for me. It intersects far more than 
appears on the surface. My wife Ukes the contrast of the two courtships — 
the respectable- tentative and the headlong-decisive one, and says she 
would have had a divorce if I had drasticated it. 

' August 22nd. Come to dinner ! It would give my wife the oppor- 
tunity of showing the courage of her opinions that that blessed book of 
mip>s won't bear sphtting. 

' Sept. s^d- I am horribly penitent for a big blunder. Mea Culpa ! 
Some of the chapters were improperly numbered ! The effect was that 
you read Chapter 20 three chapters too soon. That is to say, Pellew carried 
the old woman upstairs three chapters before the accident which incapacitated 
her. Perfectly fatal, / should say. 

' Lor bless you ! my memory isn't worth the brains it dwells in ! 

' October 2.6th. I am so work-struck with proofs, I can't get to see you. 
That's where Eiuclid had the best of us — his proofs needed no correction. 

' Dec. 2},rd, 191 3. I have been fearfully busy getting to the end of 
this blessed book that has been on my shoulders for near two years past. 
It's done now, and I feel like Christian in Pilgrim's Progress when his 
burden slipped from his shoulders. It will be issued in February. Very 
few will read through the 900 pages ; but to hope that anyone will is to 
wish him long life.' 

To Mr. Vance at this date he wrote : — 

' 127 Church Street, 
' Chelsea, S.W., 
' November iph, 191 3. 

' I have just read your book Joan with great interest and pleasure. It 
seems to me very unlike the others I have of yours. This one is much 
more concrete, and one takes for granted that it is Nature that is reflected 
in the mirror, because of the force and vividness of the reflection. I myself 
belong to the stodgy and fogey circles that never go it, and never can 
go it, in the nature of things. So whether Joan is a possible character or 
all out of your own head — how can I tell ? She convinces me of herself, 
on paper, and of the mire of the stage coulissier in New York, probably 
elsew here. It is a mere chance that my knowledge of the stage world is 
different. It is very slight. 

' I have been very much amused guessing the meanings of the slang. 
I suppose " can that bunk" means " carry away that refuse in a can." 
Is that right ? 

' I have just completed a long nightmare of about 400,000 words. I 
will send you a copy when it comes out. But you mustn't read mine 
because I read yours ! — that wouldn't be fair measure. Sample the first 
100,000.' 

The next spring he wrote : — 

' I'm so glad you find Ghosts readable. What a-many years it is now 
since I first heard how I had taken your name without knowing it ! 
' And what a lot of books we have written since then ! ' 

The new novel had at last made its appearance under the 
title of WheJi Ghost Meets Ghost. For the general reader it was 
decided to compress it into one volume (' the book too big and 
the print too smaU ! ' lamented De Morgan ) ; but a two volume 
edition was printed at the author's expense, for his private 
satisfaction. 



346 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

' I think the book may be going to be a success,' he wrote 
tentatively to Heinemann. ' Viesseux [the hbrarian in Flor- 
ence] is sending every copy out with a printed request that it 
shall be returned in three days.' 

' Viesseux,' rejoined Heinemann, ' must be a humorist if 
he gives his clients three days in which to read this book ! ' 

None the less, the novel was joyfully hailed by the public 
as a return to De Morgan's earlier manner. ' Long though the 
book is,' pronounced the Press, ' there is never a word that 
does not convey some rousing bit of characterization, or some 
highly original bit of humour. . . . There are two ways of 
being long of speech : one is to use many words in saying some- 
thing of little interest, the other is to have many interesting 
things to say,' One critic in far-away Kentucky, with delicate 
imagination, thus described the fashion of the workmanship : — 

' Yes, it is leisurely, and it requires unlimited leisure to read it. His 
methods recall those of a lace-maker — one of those long-ago lace-makers 
who made what they call " pillow-lace." Innumerable little reels this 
lace-maker had, all dangling in the air and flying about, apparently in the 
most inconsequent manner, but, just when the eye was dizzy with the 
fascination of following her glancing hands, lo ! there was a neat finished 
pattern, with every thread in place. So does Mr. De Morgan dangle his 
threads with no visible result for a long time, and then, just when one 
begins to wonder if anything really is going to happen, and what it is all 
about, the pattern takes shape and all the loose threads are neatly Imotted 
into position.' 

Most critics, however, recognized that it was impossible 
to give any adequate synopsis of the plot. ' Mr. De Morgan,' 
wails one reviewer, ' has dedicated his new novel to " The Spirit 
of Fiction " — and little wonder ! It begins with Chapter o 
and ends, after many lengthy ones, with a Pendrift on page 
862 ! ' But De Morgan had forestalled the accusation of pro- 
hxity. ' The omission of half ' — he admits in the book, with 
delightful effrontery, ' would shorten the tale, and spare the 
reader so much. What a very small book the History of the 
World would be if all the events were left out ! ' Furthermore 
he decided, ' It is sometimes rather flattering to find that the 
writer of a very laudatory review hasn't read the book. As for 
instance one who thinks that Mr. Wlx married Lady Gwen 
and describes how Uncle Mo' killed the Sweep, Peter Gunn.' 
Yet to those who had conscientiously endeavoured to master 
the intricacies of the plot he accorded his profound commisera- 
tion. . . . ' What an arduous task it must be to get up a review 
of 900 pages ! I don't wonder critics object to the length. I 
have read one review, a long newspaper column of small print, 
embodying a careful analysis of the story, and wondered how 
much the writer, poor fellow, got for it ! Certainly it should 
have been £5 — I suspect it was nearer £2.' 



'UNLIKELY STORIES AND 'GHOSTS' 347 

Within a week of publication a second impression of the 
novel was required, and within a fortnight, a third. ' The 
success of this book,' wrote De Morgan on February 21, ' is 
a great relief to me, for I felt it was like Joe over again — would 
be a great success or go quite flabby. I have not seen more 
than three reviews yet, but one of those was TJie Times — I sup- 
pose it has rarely fallen to the lot of any author to read a more 
gratifying one — and I am truly grateful to the writer of it. 
But he ascribes too much optimism to me ! However, I am glad 
my books produce that effect, because there are plenty of the 
other sort.' 

To those readers who were anxious to identify each place 
and person, he explained that Sapps Court where much of the 
action takes place was one of his own elusive Ghosts. He 
remembered it distinctly, as it was half a century before, off 
Tottenham Court Road, and described it as he recalled it ; 
but when he went to verify his description, he looked for it in 
vain. It had vanished ; and even its correct name eluded his 
recollection. 

Nevertheless, the unconscious relation by him in fiction 
of events previously, or subsequently, duplicated in real life, 
again occurred in connexion with this book. At a moment 
when the Press was discussing the probability of the story, 
a newspaper cutting was sent to him from Indianapolis, con- 
taining a paragraph which bore the heading ' Sisters meet after 
Sixty Years.' This related how two sisters. Miss Emily Mayo, 
of London, and Mrs. Sarah Mayo-Glasgow, of Galena, had met 
once again in romantic fashion after a sixty-years' separation : — 

' ]Mr. William De Morgan,' concluded the paragraph, ' writes about 
" impossible things " which happen after his books appear. This event, 
curiously enough, coincides with the sixty-years' separation of two sisters 
which is the basis for the title of his last novel ; and, strangely too, this 
is only one of several instances when the seeming improbability of Mr. De 
Morgan's fiction has been confounded by fact after the book in question 
appeared ! ' 

Among the letters which he subsequently received, the 
following greatly interested him : — 

A Stranger to William De Morgan. 

' Rural Free Delivery Route I, 
' TiLTON, New Hampshire, U.S.A., 

' April 2, 1914. 
' My dear Sir, — 

' Perhaps you will forgive the liberty I take in writing you when 
you hear the rather unusual way in which your books are read and loved 
in this family of two — a father and daughter — living in a kind of wilderness 
in the mountain region of New Hampshire. 

' We left a Massachussetts city several years ago — there were three of 
us then — to come to this little farm, my father's boyhood home, where 
he wished, as he said, to spend his second childhood. As we are six 



348 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

miles from post office and town in a sparsely inhabited hamlet, you can 
believe that books mean more to us than ever before. We brought a 
part of our old library with us, but fiction, particularly modern fiction, 
is hardly represented at all, as my father cannot be induced to read it — 
with the exception of Tolstoi and now you. His reading aloud to us 
consisted chiefly of old classics with an occasional Tolstoi tale, until 
Alice-for-Short appeared among us. 

' Then began a wonderful era. The days, largely filled with the 
arduous and perplexing problems of housework, to wliich we were unac- 
customed, took on a new brightness — for, every morning, breakfast was 
followed by a reading from Alice-for-Short. Brief as they were (for we 
were allowed only a few pages a day — though they grew somewhat longer 
as time went on) we were transported into the enchanted world of Alice 
and Peggy and all the others. The reading was slow, with many inter- 
ruptions, such as "That is Shakespearian" — "This man is a wonderful 
psychologist," " Wliat a vocabulary he has ! " " That is like De Foe," 
etc. My father's reading is always slow, with many pauses. His reading 
aloud to his family is a long-established institution, dating back to my 
earliest childhood, when we listened to Grimm, Msop's Fables, Alice in 
Wonderland, tales of Greek Mythology — never more than one tale in an 
evening. It is impossible to tell you of the joy this book Alice-for-Short 
gave us. It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say those readings have 
exceeded all literary pleasures of my life. During household duties I 
had the previous chapters to think of and the next one to look forward 
to. With no concerts, plays, art exhibitions or calls, tliis was our chief 
recreation. 

' There came a sad day when the book was finished, so can you imagine 
what it meant for us to welcome Somehow Good ? — 'just as absorbing, 
original and enchanting as Alice-for-Short. Next — for us — came Joseph 
Vance. We quoted Christopher Vance as we had quoted Peggy's father 
and mother. We laughed and wept and admired. \Mien, during An 
Affair of Dishonour, some one made a criticism, the reader said : "I have 
put myself in Mr. De Morgan's hands — I shall not find fault with him. I 
believe in letting an artist practise his art in his own way. You remember 
the answer Turner made when a fellow artist said in looking at The Burial 
of Sir David Willde — ' Haven't you made those sails too black ? ' 'If 
there was anything blacker than black I'd use it ! ' " 

' It Never Can Happen Again contained the masterlv portrait of the 
mischievous, meddlesome Mrs. Eldridge. After A Likely Story — \\-ith 
Sairah, Mr. Aiken's memorable search for his tube of transparent Oxide 
of Chromium and the romantic Italian tale — we wondered if Mr. De 
Morgan were writing another novel. While waiting we had had Don 
Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, besides Henry James's A Small Boy and 
Others and the Charles Eliot Norton Letters. One book of modern fiction 
my father had been persuaded to read — but it was of no use to propose 
another. But there came a Red Letter Day when a post card told us of a 
new De Morgan — When Ghost Meets Ghost. We sent one day and it came 
two days later. 

' Wc have read only about half of those wonderful pages — (only two 
of us to read now — first we were three — then four — now my father and I 
are alone) I cannot tell you what these evening readings are to us — only 
about twelve pages at a time — but if we end with the close of a chapter 
I console myself with the fascinating synopsis of the new one. 

' Even if I had the gift of expressing myself in writing, which I have 
not, I doubt if I could convey to anyone the pleasure I have in your books. 
I can only say there have never before been novels so delightful. The 
beautiful leisure that pervades them — the portrayal of childhood — youth — 



'UNLIKELY STORIES' AND 'GHOSTS' 349 

age — the good and evil in your people — the exquisite humour — the high 
moral atmosphere — the things one has observed but never before seen 
expressed — the things one never would have thought of if you had not 
pointed them out — the love-making — the pathos — the dwellers in slums — 
the good doctors — the many details which are never tedious — above all 
the charm of your people and their surroundings — my father and I have 
felt all this and much more. I only wished to tell you of our gratitude for 
all you have given us during these last rather lonely years — and I am afraid 
I have been tedious and stupid. 

' Asking your forgiveness for the intrusion. 

' I am, 
' Gratefully yours, 

' (Miss) Olive Russell.' 

William De Morgan to Miss Olive Russell. 

' VlALE MlLTON, 

' Florence, Italy, 

' I9.4I4- 

' Dear Madam, — 

' Your letter will find a special place among the many I have 
received from your countrymen. I am often sorry that the publication 
of a number of these would be so very egotistic — as it certainly would — 
because they are so full of insight into the rationale of fiction, and take 
so just a view of its relation to its author. 

' As for instance what you tell me in your letter of your father's reception 
of the Affair of Dishonour ; this has always been rather a favourite child 
of mine as it was very difficult to rear — or write — such children are — but 
it was worth making the attempt once to write outside my experience. 
I may never try the experiment again, but I see nothing to discourage me 
from doing so in the comments of those who have read it all through, so 
far as they have reached me. I need not say that the opinions of critics 
who mistook it for an historical novel have had no weight with me. It is 
not an historical novel as all the characters are imaginary. 

' Anyhow, your father's belief in letting an artist write in his own way 
is the soundest position to see fiction from, and I wish the activities of the 
Press were more influenced by it. 

' I am sorry I kept you waiting so long for When Ghost Meets Ghost. 
I had no intention of making it more than half the length, but it got the 
bit in its teeth. I hope to remain on this planet long enough to finish 
another — but who can say ? 

' Let me thank you cordially for writing such a welcome letter. All 
such letters are welcome to authors, and I think none of them pretend 
otherwise. If they do they are story-tellers — in the vernacular sense. 

' Believe me, very truly yours, 

' William De Morgan.' 

Professor Lyon Phelps to William De Morgan. 

' May =fth, 1914. 

' Dear Mr. De Morgan, — 

' My wife and I have each read every word of your Ghosts with the 
keenest delight. I really cannot express my admiration for the wonderful 
skill in construction, and my pleasure in becoming acquainted ■with such 
men and women. 

' This is the MS. I saw in Florence in April 1912 ; — the most " Demor- 
gany " book of all, you said it would be, and you were right. It is a 
wonderful book, and happy am I to be living just now. 

' I hope you are both happy in your labours. I wish I could see you 



350 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

again, but we are not coming over this year, and you won't come hither, I 
suppose. Please give Mrs. De Morgan our greetings, and believe me 

' Admiringly and affectionately yours, 
' Wm. Lyon Phelps.' 

William De Morgan to Professor Phelps. 

' 127 Church Street, 
' Chelsea, S.W., 
' Dear Prof. Phelps, — ' May 17, 1914. 

' 1 was much pleased to get your letter and hear that you had read 
— and survived — Ghosts. I have just answered a letter from a gentleman 
who started reading on March i8th and finished April 21st. And yet he 
wTTote to thank the author ! I do really feel that this is a most good- 
natured world. 

' 1 should think it must have been the one I was tinkering two years 
ago when you came to us on the Mugnone. At the same time another 
thing I had been working on — which I am now half-way through — may 
have been the exact one, as it is, if anything, more demorganatic still — I 
hope to issue it in (say) 1 916.1 

' We have left Florence for good. My wife's pictures have almost all 
arrived here — and will live in a big studio near by with no one to look 
at them ! We went for a fortnight to Venice, the most delicious place 
in the world ! Coming here is hke Stygian gloom after Greece — or was, 
till yesterday. 

' No, — I can't come acros-j to see you, in spite of the temptation. 
Nevertheless I hope we may meet again in this world, and the next. 

' Thank you very sincerely indeed for your over-estimate of my pen- 
stragglings. My wife joins in my affectionate good wishes to you and yours. 

' Yours always, 

' Wm. De Morgan.' 

' Florence has grown too melancholy to live in,' wrote De 
Morgan at this date ; and in consequence of this decision, the 
pictures which his wife had painted there were fortunately 
conveyed by sea to England before the events which followed 
precluded her returning to Italy, They consisted of eight 
large canvases and some smaller, and they filled the empty 
studio where they were housed \vith a wealth of colour and 
beauty ; but when urged by the manager of a public Gallery to 
exhibit them, Evelyn still refused. ' We have quite a circus 
of her pictures here now,' De Morgan wrote cheerfully ; ' they 
are all very Dr. Thorpey in ideas ! ' Meanwhile Mrs. Fleming, 
who had written many charming verses on the early paintings 
of both De Morgan and his wife, wrote again on this later work ; 
and one little poem has survived destruction. It describes a 
picture entitled ' Love's Piping,' wherein Love, crowned with 
roses, sits piping on a rock over-hanging a stream, while above 
him, contrasting with his rosy wings, spreads a tree with a 
mass of delicate, snowy mayblossom. On the opposite bank, 
a maiden, bhnd-folded, wooed by the lure of his music, is step- 
ping to destruction, while other maidens, garlanded with blossom, 
watch her peril callously. 

^ The Old Man's Youth and the Young Man's Old Age, pubUshed 
postliumously in 1921. 



'UNLIKELY STORIES' AND 'GHOSTS' 351 

Love the Misleader. 

' Hearken my piping, and follow my piping. 
The song that is new when the world is old ; 
Hither maiden, that goest a-maying 
For Whitethorn silver and King-cup gold. 

' Leave your flowers and leave your fellows. 
Follow the song that is always sweet ' ; 
And the Maiden heard — for the distance mellows. 
And followed the piping with fleet, fair feet. 

Her eyes were holden — by Fate's decreeing. 
For Love can see, though lovers are blind ; 
And down the valley, all, all unseeing 
She followed the piping — a-far in the wind. 

' Hither Maiden that goest a-maying ! 
Maids must answer when Love doth sing. 
Find my place in the pleasant gloaming. 
Follow me, follow me — westering ! ' 

Love on a rock, with a stream below him, 
Laughed at blind feet and groping hands ; 
Waters quench not — for those who know him. 
They Love's Chosen — his sealed bands. 

Nymphs a-maying — but none to save her. 
(They have suffered — they watch and smile.) 
Stumbling feet and a pool to grave her ; 
And Love is piping and pla^ang the while. 

Earlier that same year, before his exodus from Florence, 
De Morgan had read a volume of reminiscences by his lifelong 
friend Henry Holiday, whom he correctly described as ' a singu- 
lar example of a man of almost universal attainments.' On 
January 16, 1914, he wrote : — 

' Pawling had already made me the possessor of a complete set of 
proofs, out of which I had taken a semi-circular bite aH but as big as the 
sandwich. Evelyn did more. She read it from cover to cover, so far as 
one can do befo-e a book is bound — and lamented when she came to the 
end — savs it i^' the most readable book she has had for a month of Sundays. 

' However, I have virtually read it all through in an irregular way that 
my poor old brain, overtaxed by writing, has reduced my reading to. ... 

' I like your preface [advocating peace] enormously, being quite in 
sympathy with all parties that agree with the general sketch of the Nazarene 
Party, in the Borough of Galilee. Only I want people to go on construct- 
ing ironclads until their only sensitive organ, the pocket, feels it. . . . 

' It's very strange to read at tliis length of time such clear recollections 
of that old Welsh period — which a life full of troubles has since made 
misty. There have been seven deaths in my family since then, and though 
some have not been deiinitely tragic, there has been an element of .^schy- 
lean tragedy in the story. 

' However, nothing comes near poor Simeon in tragedy. 

' My wife sends you warm thanks for the book — but she envies you 
all you have seen. So do I. But there is a drawback to a lazy-bones like 
me. See how you have had to exert yourself. . . . 

' I wish all whose lives have been so full and varied as yours would 
follow your example. It would not overload the planet with autobio- 
graphies. Indeed, if I could think it a friendly act to apply to a friend 



352 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

a line of poetry that won't parse, I would drag in " The man so various that 
he seemed to be, not one, but all mankind's epitome." ' 

But the momentary note of sorrow in this letter, conjured 
up by the vision of a happy past seen through the haze of years, 
was intensified when news came to him shortly afterwards of 
the death of Mrs. Morris, the friend of so many treasured recol- 
lections. ' How the visible and tangible world has shrunk 
[quoad friends) for me in the last few years ! ' he wrote sadly. 
' Like Dr. Thorpe I have " done a good deal of surviving " and 
fmd it sorry work.' By and by when her daughter pleaded 
earnestly that he would give any assurance which lay in his 
power respecting his own belief in the tangibility of that other 
life to which the majority of mankind look forward with serene 
confidence, he wrote with the simple honesty which still scorned 
both subterfuge and self-deception. 

William De Morgan to May Morris. 

' ViALE Milton, 

' Florence, 
' My dear May, — ' ^rd Feb., 1914. 

' How I do wish I could write a word to put heart into an old 
friend — so old a friend ! — face to face with Death. I grieve to have 
nothing to say, that I am at liberty to say, beyond that my own belief 
is fixed, that this life is an instalment of a larger and longer one. 

' I know — or think — your inquiry to mean — " Has this belief been 
founded on mere reason, or on some confirmatory experience ? " My 
answer is that some small experience 1 have had of apparent communi- 
cation with folk on the other side nmst have had some weight in turning 
the scale so decidedly. But it may have been very small. I suspect that 
the lifelong faith of the strongest consecutive reasoner I ever knew — my 
father — had more to do with it than anything else. 

' If the fev/ things that I have met with, that have any value, could be 
told without involving others than myself, I would gladly write them to 
you. But they would amount to very little, all said and done. I don't 
think that from all my experience I could produce an}i;hing so much to 
the purpose as the incidents described in my father's preface to my mother's 
From Matter to Spirit, which you may have read. These incidents 
need to be read — to see their force — with a much closer attention than is 
commonly given to things in print. 

' Perhaps we shall die and after all be none the wiser as to what Death 
means, and Life. But it does not recommend itself to my understanding. 
Intense curiosity, and a hope that this life is a dream we wake from, rather 
than Death a sleep we fall into — those are my mental conditions.' 

Not long afterwards he was urged to make some definite pro- 
nouncement on the question of Psychical research, and especially 
whether his faith in ' immortalism ' was at all due to a belief in 
SpirituaHsm ; and he answered his correspondent guardedly : — 

' After long observation of the way in which testimony on the subject 
referred to in your letter is generally received, I think it best to reserve 
whatever experiences I may have had personally, for the present certainly, 
possibly altogether. 

' I think it will be evident that I should not have arrived at this decision 
unless these experiences had run counter to accepted popular conclusions. 



•UNLIKELY STORIES' AND 'GHOSTS' 353 

' I may, however, say that I have never wished for the alteration of 
one word of the preface my father wTote to my mother's book From Matter 
to Spirit. Also that I was a personal witness of the instances of alleged 
communication from his relatives which he relates.' 

' People,' he said privately, ' are settling slowly to accept 
the reality of these things, but the point is we get very little 
nearer the cause of them,' As in his early days, he still con- 
sidered the subject suh judice, and his first and last pronounce- 
ment upon it is defined in the course of his argument in Joseph 
Vance respecting the Ghost in the Corpse. 

' I expressed just now my mistrust of what is called Spiritualism (very 
absurdly, as it deprives us of a word the reverse of materialism. I want 
the word Spiritualist to describe myself, and can't use it because of Mrs. 
Guppy and the Davenport brothers). 

' But I'm going to say a good word for even this sort of thing. I owe 
it a trifle for a message said to come from 'V^oltaire's Ghost. It was asked : 
" Are you now convinced of another world ? " and rapped out, " There is 
no other world — Death is only an incident in Life." He was a suggestive 
Ghost, at any rate.' 

None the less, it is not surprising that two people tempera- 
mentally hypersensitive and impressionable should have had 
curious experiences in regard to supposed psychic phenomena 
and telepathy ; indeed, the almost uncanny succession of coin- 
cidences connected with De Morgan's fiction sometimes found a 
counterpart in the development of his wife's art. 

On one occasion Mrs. Pickering was anxious to give a pre- 
sent to her brother. Sir Walter Spencer-Stanhope, and com- 
missioned Evelyn to paint a large picture for this purpose, the 
subject to be chosen by its future recipient. Sir Walter, however, 
declared himself unable to think of anything suitable, and 
finally, as Evelyn sat drawing in her studio in London one 
evening, it flashed across her that she would like to paint a 
picture from the text, ' Mercy and Truth have met together, 
Righteousness and Peace have kissed each other.' So clearly did 
she visualize the design that she drew it forthwith. 

The following morning brought a letter from her uncle in 
Yorkshire : ' I have at last thought of a subject I should like 
painted,' he wrote ; and to her astonishment he suggested the 
text for which she had drawn the cartoon apparently at the very 
hour at which he was writing to her ! 

Certain incidents, however, which occurred to both De 
Morgan and his wife seem suggestive of the erratic pranks of 
a poltergeist. 

One evening when they were having some friends to dinner 
at their flat in Florence, the conversation turned on the sub- 
ject of SpirituaHsm. All present related their experiences save 
one lady who, while helping herself from a dish of rissoles, which 
she pronounced to be excellent, declared in the same breath 

z 



354 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

that she would never beheve in the supernatural unless some 
event, however trivial, came under her notice which could be 
explained by no rational interpretation. 

After dinner the conversation drifted to other topics, and 
by and by, as the guests were departing, De Morgan went with 
them out into the hall where he had hung up their coats and 
cloaks upon some pegs which were placed so high that the 
other members of the party who had not the advantage of his 
height could not reach them. As he lifted down the cloak 
of the lady who had proclaimed her scepticism, suddenly from 
its hood, in the view of all present, there shot out an article 
which hit her upon the nose and then fell to the floor. Con- 
siderably startled, everyone began to search for the mysterious 
object which, since it had seemed alive, De Morgan momen- 
tarily concluded to be what he termed ' a mouse with Alpine 
proclivities.' It was, however, soon discovered that the lively 
object was a rissole — now ice-cold — one which had apparently 
come from the dish of which the lady had been partaking when 
she had announced her disbelief in the supernatural ! 

The incident, for all its appearance of a practical joke, re- 
mained to De Morgan inexplicable. During the entire evening 
none of those present had been out into the hall ; the only 
other people in the flat were the Italian chef, who had never 
left the kitchen, and his wife who had waited at table. The 
latter was extremely short and could not have reached the 
cloak ; both were preternaturally solemn and incapable of an 
unseemly jest ; neither understood a word of English. More- 
over, the fact remained that the rissole had not fallen from its 
hiding place, but had leapt ! 

On another occasion an incident happened which seemed 
full of ominous import. Evelyn, walking along Kensington 
High Street one afternoon, when nearly opposite the station, 
distinctly heard her husband's voice call ' Yoicks ' — a word 
by which they were in the habit of hailing each other. She 
turned round, startled, expecting to see him ; but he was nowhere 
in sight. Yet so vivid was the impression that, although she 
had an engagement in the opposite direction, she returned 
home, feeUng perturbed lest anything had happened to him. 
He, however, was not in the house ; but later in the afternoon 
he appeared, likewise looking distressed and anxious. ' I want 
to know,' he questioned at once, ' were you in the neighbour- 
hood of High Street Station this afternoon ? ' ' Yes,' she replied, 
full of curiosity ; ' why do you ask ? ' ' Because I was bicycling 
past the station, and I distinctly heard you call " Yoicks ! " 
I got off my bicycle and looked for you everywhere, but I could 
not see you.' ' What time was that ? ' asked Evelyn. ' Six 
o'clock.' ' And / went past the station at four, and heard 



'UNLIKELY STORIES' AND 'GHOSTS' 355 

you call ! ' she replied. As an instance of possible telepathy the 
episode was curious ; in its absence of sequel it remained pointless. 

It will be remembered that De Morgan had noticed that a 
particular type of dream came to him with unfailing regularity 
before a death took place in his family — a dream of his early 
home in Camden Street, entirely unremarkable save that 
throughout his life its recurrence proved the inevitable precursor 
o* some bereavement. One night he dreamed it with extreme 
vividness, but no ill-tidings followed, and he had forgotten 
the occurrence when, some weeks later, he learnt that, at the 
date when he had been visited by the dream, his brother Edward 
had been killed by a fall from his hor-ie in South Africa. On 
another occasion the dream came to him indistinctly, and, after 
a similar lapse of time, he heard of the death in Africa of the 
infant son of that same brother. 

De Morgan often referred facetiously to the curious succession 
of coincidences in matters great and small which seemed to 
dog all that he did. ' I am writing to you,' he says in one letter 
to Heinemann, ' not because I have a single thing to say, but 
because I am wanting to hear from you ! Every time I write 
to you, with the regularity of a clock-tick, a letter arrives from 
you by the next post. And you see our letters can't cross with- 
out yours having something to cross. Post hoc, propter hoc' 

But apart from ludicrous or trivial occurrences, De Morgan 
and his wife had an experience of which they never spoke to 
the outer world, and respecting which their reticence is easily 
comprehensible, since they both felt strongly that in dealing 
with any phenomena apparently inexplicable on materiaUstic 
grounds, not only caution but reverence was requisite. They 
both recognized very clearly that the majority of such investi- 
gations in Spiritualism were productive of two evils— an incite- 
ment to fraud to prey on credulity, and the danger of a loss of 
mental balance in the participators. Still more they appreciated 
the fact that all deductions from such experiments must remain 
largely theoretical, and that the phenomena investigated are open 
to more than one interpretation. On the other hand, they felt 
that if any substratum of truth underlay the seeming triviality 
of much of these phenomena, they did not wish hghtly to expose 
what was sacred to the sneers of the prejudiced. 

This being so, they determined to prosecute their experi- 
ment without bias, simply and privately ; they decided that 
each evening they would set apart a quiet time after dinner 
for the development of automatic writing ; and that they would 
admit no friends to take part in it, or to share their confidence. 
Owing to the retired life they then led, they were able to pursue 
this plan with very few breaks in its continuity ; they sat with 
no other apparatus than a pencil and a sheet of paper, while 



356 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

one placed a hand upon the wrist of the other. At first little 
or no result was arrived at. When the pencil moved, it wan- 
dered aimlessly over the paper, describing meaningless gyrations. 
By and by, words appeared, incessantly repeated ; then broken 
sentences, but so disjointed and senseless that often they felt 
disposed to give up the attempt. After many months of patient 
perseverance, however, the writing assumed a different form. 
' Angels ' professed to write— occasionally interrupted by their 
prototypes — and a definite course of teaching was instituted 
by what purported to be the glorified Spirit of a man who, when 
on earth, had been a wretched leper. In this fashion they 
got a mass of correspondence, most of it curious, some of it 
of singular and lofty beauty, all of it totally different from 
the usual inanities procured under like conditions. It is an 
interesting question how far the conjunction of two rare minds, 
acting in complete harmony, sufficed to produce a rare develop- 
ment ; but to the self-constituted mediums it seemed that 
an influence external to their consciousness evolved every 
phrase. Moreover, two things were curious about the experi- 
ment. While they wrote, the sense of a word which they were 
transcribing might occasionally become apparent to them, 
but the meaning of what they were transcribing — the gist of 
an entire sentence, far more, an entire paragraph— was totally 
unintelligible to them until they were able to read it as a whole. 
Still more, the writing itself varied in a fashion which they 
could not influence, what purported to be different ' controls ' 
on each occasion producing entirely different autographs. 

After a time the experiment was abandoned, principally 
because its outcome latterly consisted of a repetition of the 
first letters produced ; but the beautiful ideas suggested by 
these communications made a deep impression on both writers, 
possibly all the more that these were a reflex of their own men- 
tality. For the motif dominant in all these ' letters ' likewise 
permeates De Morgan's fiction ; the belief that this life is but 
one phase of a great whole, one stage in a continuous progression, 
and that the growth of a soul is the greatest good ; while the same 
message Evelyn passed on to the world in glowing colours and 
fair fancies. In most of her later pictures can be traced that 
paramount idea of struggle and of growth, the battle for attain- 
ment to a rarer atmosphere, a finer development ; and her work 
is penetrated with a wealth of spiritual insight apparent to 
those whose minds are atune to interpret it. One picture especi- 
ally may be cited in this connexion. 

In ' The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence,' within a small 
space of canvas is depicted the gradual evolution of a develop- 
ing soul. At the base are seen the grey, sad forms of the spirit- 
ually damned — those who dwell mentally in outer darkness. 



' 'UNLIKELY STORIES' AND 'GHOSTS' 357 

Next are depicted their first painful steps upwards towards the 
Hght which, as yet, cannot be discerned by them, even though 
a faint flush from that far-away glory is already dyeing their 
drab-hued garments. Then, gradually, as they struggle upwards 
by slow, arduous degrees, the colour intensifies ; their dark- 
ened gaze is directed towards the heavens — not, as previously, 
earthwards ; till, by and by, when they have risen higher, 
the chains fall from their fettered limbs, the bandages from their 
blinded eyes, and there bursts upon each emancipated spirit 
the gladness and the music of the spheres. 

Many other of her works, however, might be instanced 
as expressing variations of the same idea of spiritual stagna- 
tion and blindness, or the stress and agony of self-realization 
and development. In ' A Soul in Hell,' we see the picture 
of a man who, ' surrounded by everything that is beautiful 
and desirable, yet, by the force of his own dark spirit, dwells 
in a Hell of his own making.' In another picture entitled ' The 
Captives ' is depicted a cave, hung with age-old stalactites, 
wherein are imprisoned female captives, clothed in rainbow 
tints, but terrorized by shadowy dragons, phantasms of their 
own creation. Another large canvas entitled ' Realities ' tells 
its tale more forcibly and with painful emphasis. 

Four female figures are seated upon the shore, while about 
them hover bat-like larvas of evil appearance. The women 
are depicted fair of form, graceful of pose, and clad in draperies 
so exquisite and exhibiting such lovely gradations of colour 
that this vivid beauty accentuates to a point of horror the 
contrasting ugliness of their features. For their faces are the 
faces of those spiritually — even mentally — deficient, sodden 
with the crass stupidity of a mind dead to higher things. And 
as they sit there, deaf and blind to the glory of the spheres, above 
them — close to them — in the translucent ether are floating 
a bevy of angelic forms, radiant in celestial light, song breathing 
from their joyous lips, bliss expressed in their glancing wings, 
their airy flight, their lovely faces. Yet not every one read the 
interpretation aright. 

' I suppose,' said a visitor one day, ' these ' — pointing to the 
angelic vision — ' are the Dreams ; and the lower figures — 
the sadness, the sordidness, and the misery clothed in beauty 
which is a mockery — those are the " Realities " of Life ? ' 

* I see differently,' said Evelyn De Morgan. 

And in a little notebook De Morgan likewise pencilled this 
sentence : ' The things we count real are dreams, and the real- 
ities are all a-head.' 

In yet another picture, ' The Valley of Shadows,' previously 
referred to, a different aspect of the same belief is expressed. 
It may be held to be imaged thus in the automatic script. 



358 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

You are in the Valley of Sliadows, but you know it, hence the light 
by which I write and the woids that echo in your brain. . . . These 
Shadows are big and ominous. ITiey are hight misery and disease, poverty 
and despondency. But they are Shadows to be followed by the phantom 
shapes of success and wealthy ease. All are Shadows. 

Outside in the clear vault of Heaven, under the burning sky of Truth, 
they have no existence . . . the faint dying shout of Devils is lost in 
the swelling music of the spheres. . . . 

To give isolated examples, however, of the writings which 
coincided with many of the ideas expressed in both pictures 
and novels would be misleading without the context ; yet a 
few paragraphs in relation to Art may be quoted as being obviously 
in unison with the mentality of those who transcribed them. 

' You are not to think that the only reason for doing Art is to make 
life beautiful. The ugliness in modern life is a blindness to existing things 
most necessary to the growth of the human soul. I think the best thing 
to strive for is the realization that Art should be Harmony. The second 
thing to grasp is that Harmony is the creative force, and Discord the 
power of dissolution. Out of Harmony comes growth. Out of Discord, 
Death and destruction. In life on Earth growth is slain by Discord, and 
Harmony leads to fruition. . . . Now I see clear, and Life is a most glorious 
thing and Death but a phantom. 

* # * * * 

' The spiritual can only be seen by Spirit, and the reason Art is of 

vital importance in the scheme of Life is that it depends for its very 

existence on certain spiritual laws not known on Earth, only guessed at. 

Now to understand tliis, two things are required : intense faith and great 

simplicity of character. The faith is needed to grasp the dimness of the 

unseen, and the simphcity is needed in order that the veil of matter should 

not destroy by its complexity the chance of the inner Vision to see things 

clearly not of your earth. Art is entirely of the Spirit. Only as the 

Spirit grows does it become possible. 

***** 

' It is the best thing on earth, that incessant struggle. . . . Art is 
more important than you think. But it must be earnest, grim life-earnest- 
ness that has no tincture of gain in it, or love of earth-fame : only the 
strength of one's arm, and the whole power of one's being are to be given 
to it ; and to look neither to the right nor to the left, but go straight on 
doing the best that is in one.' 

***** 

' Art is hard, and the flesh is a burden and many are swept back by 
the flood of adverse criticism. It is best to do as you do, to work in the 
shade till you catch the distant echo of the music you must repeat to 
others ; to shun the public with its ever-vacant stare, to hide your inner- 
most tlioughts from view till they grow and become strong. Continue, 
Farewell ! ' 

Interspersed throughout the writings, however, were certain 
passages that seem to recur with a frequency which, in the 
sad days that were approaching, must surely have been recalled 
to the thoughts of one of the writers : — 

' You are almost among the Spirits, but still the Flesh is there. You 
are not long for this world. . . . The Spirit is bright, but the frame wears 
thin. . . . When you come, pray, pray to get free together, for Happiness 
cannot be for one without the other.' 




The Worship of Mammon 
Evelyn De Morgan pinxit 

[In the possession of Mrs. Stirling. 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE YOUNG MAN'S OLD AGE 

1914-1917 

IN July, 1914, De Morgan, seated at the ' table with the 
queer feet ' at which his father had been wont to write, 
with quiet amusement re-enacted the role which his readers loved 
to assign to him, that of the' benevolent old gentleman,' exponent 
of ' early Victorianism,' a survival from a world old-fashioned 
beyond belief, yet with certain redeeming features to set against 
its obvious absurdities. Tranquilly he wrote : — 

' I believe that Youth can never image the youth of its grandsires, 
can never really think of its grandmothers as — to put it plainly — kissable. 
Of course, says Youth, these old fogies had a kind of working juvenility 
to justify the fewness of their years ; but that was their old-fashioned 
humbug. They were overshadowed all the time by the future-perfect 
tense, and the gloom of their senility to come was retrospective. Look 
at the pictures of them ! Read their fiction — their poems ! Old fogies 
from the beginning, incurable ! That is what they were, while, on the 
other hand. We are up to date. . . . 

Dear boy — dear girl — you are quite mistaken ! You have no intrinsic 
newness others have not had before, each in his turn and hers. Fogeydom 
of old was Modern too in its day, and Bucks and Dandies were once 
the Last Tiling Out ; even as Nuts, I believe now are. I, vanishing at 
last, look back forgivingly, almost lovingly to the vacuous fatuities of 
my days of vacuum ; the then-new slang that made my father sick ; 
the area of incorrigible crinolines ; the Piccadilly streamers of the swells, 
and their Noah's Ark coats. And they have grown to be b5rword3 of 
scorn to you. . . . ' 

Then, into the midst of that tranquil, leisurely fiction, came 
news which startled him. On August i, writing to his friend, 
Mr. Scott-Moncrieff, he closed his letter with the following 
sentence : ' / have just read that a Declaration of War has been 
made that may make our precious Civilization a chaos ! ' On 
August 2 he added : ' I suppose all the ingenuous Arts will 
have to take a back seat now till the cloud clears. Nevertheless 
the pen that writes this is scribbling fiction as ever. One is 
incorrigible ! ' 

Two days later, England joined in the struggle ; and the 
full tide of carnage poured relentlessly over Europe. 

359 



36o WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

' What a hideous time this is ! ' wrote De Morgan in the 
October following, to the same correspondent. ' Shall we ever 
be at peace again ? I am sick of it, and only feel if I could 
kill two junkers, I should die content I I wonder if any pacifist 
ever made an oration on the top of a reinforced concrete block 
made in Peace-time to bombard London. Really, Germany 
is the Devil ! ' 

That same month he wrote to Professor Phelps : — 

' 127 Church Street, 

' Chelsea, S.W., 
' Oct. 26, 1914. 

' My dear Prof. Phelps, — 

' I have received your book and am glad to see it, and grateful. 
It is a pleasure to look forward to when the light breaks — at present one 
cannot read or write for the guns. Not that one hears them here, except 
metaphorically. But they are audible at Ramsgate. 

' I am sorry to say that I am barbarous by nature and catch myself 
gloating over slaughter — slaughter of Germans, of course ! Half of these 
men I should have liked — a tenth of these men I should have loved. It 
is sickening — but . . . 

' A friend has just left me who maintains that the Germans never 
do anjrthing that is not in strict accordance with international law. Then 
a devil may break loose, and yet comply with international law I 

' Good forecasts — good for us — are in the air to-night ! I hope — but 
have done some hoping to no purpose latterly. 

' However, the last rumour I heard professed to come direct from Sir 
John French. 

' We have left Florence altogether, so you will find our nest tenanted 
by other birds if you go there. I feel as if the world were ending up, to 
the sound of melinite ! And yet, as Browning wrote, " God never says 
one word." 

' Our very best regards to yourselves. 

' Yours ever, 

' Wm. De Morgan.' 

As the cloud darkened, and there followed days of anxiety, 
privation and increasing danger, the inventive faculties of both 
De Morgan and his wife reflected prevalent conditions. To 
imaginative minds, the horror was intensified, fancy spared 
them no measure of its realization. Up in her studio Evelyn 
painted a series of pictures in which subjects relating to war- 
time were treated in symbolic guise ; while De Morgan sat 
in his study below with his power of writing paralysed andj 
his thoughts wandering to other matters. The following autumnj 
he was writing to Mr. Scott-Moncrieff : — 

' Church Street, 
' g. 12. 15. 
' That's a lovely sonnet of yours : " When all alone ! etc." I rejoice 
that you keep in such good Shakespearean form. I try to write, but fail — 
the only work I take to is devising new means of Hun-baffling. The worst 
of the whole of it is that there's no help for it — we must have it out now, 
or bjive it again in a few years. I think of the small boys and girls I see — •] 
what is the world to be for them ? 



THE YOUNG MAN'S OLD AGE 361 

' I am told that the novel trade has a certain briskness — people want 
something to take their minds off the war. What I am writing doesn't 
take the author's off. 

' I hear some strange stories about coming development in aircraft. 
We have not had any lightning here following raids. 

' Can you, or any of yours, tell me a thing I want to know ? Can an 
aeroplane fly a kite without danger to its stability ? No one can tell me 
anything from experience. 

' Loves from both to all — and hopes for better things.' 

In spite of adverse conditions and many distractions, De 
Morgan was still struggling to continue two novels upon which 
he had been engaged before the outbreak of hostilities. Just 
as an artist will turn from one picture to another and find his 
power of perception thus quickened, so De Morgan had always 
found that he could turn without any confusion of mind from 
one plot to another, and that the transition of ideas actually 
aided self-criticism. One of the books upon which he was 
thus working was entitled The Old Mad Hou'se ; the other, 
from which quotations have already been made, he intended 
should embody many of his personal recollections of Chelsea 
in a bygone time ; and, as already explained, he had laid part 
of the scene of this latter story in his former home, the vanished 
Vale. 

The origin of the title decided upon for this book was curious. 
One day De Morgan and his wife had gone down into the country, 
where, as they were walking along a lonely lane, they saw a 
boy approaching. ' I shall ask this boy to give me a title for 
my new book ! ' said De Morgan on a sudden impulse. Accord- 
ingly he stopped the lad, and after a few preliminary remarks, 
he said, * Now, I want to ask you a funny question. I am a 
writer, and I want a name for my next book. If you were 
writing a story, what should you call it ? ' The lad reflected 
for a moment, and then said, ' I should call it The Old Man's 
Youth and the Young Man's Old Age.' ' What an incredible 
answer ! ' commented De Morgan as he walked on. ' Who 
would have thought of getting such a title out of an ordinary 
country yokel ! ' 

It will be remembered that his first intention in writing 
Joseph Vance had been that it should be the life-story of a poor 
old man dying in the Workhouse Infirmary ; and although 
the original motif had afterwards been abandoned, in this later 
novel De Morgan reverted to it, so that in his thoughts the 
tragedy of the Young Man's Old Age ran hke a sombre thread 
throughout the narrative of The Old Man's Youth. Like Joseph 
Vance the story was told in the form of an autobiography, 
and in order to identify himself more closely with the conditions 
he was describing, De Morgan depicted the narrator as a man 
who had been ruined, as he himself had, in a measure, been 



362 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

ruined, by an early adherence to Art. Thus it befell that the 
first novel written by De Morgan and the last were drawn from 
the same inspiration and written in the same vein. 

In pursuance of his idea, De Morgan paid many visits to 
the Chelsea Infirmary, where he studied the inmates and their 
surroundings, and made many devoted friends among the old 
paupers, who learnt to look eagerly for his kindly conversa- 
tion and the little presents which he invariably brought them. 
In like manner he had long been known and adored by the 
small Lizeranns and Michael Ragstoars of Chelsea. At a par- 
ticular hour in the evening when he knew that the children 
would be gathered wistfully round the doors of a cinema near 
by, he would wend his way thither, and after engaging them 
in a lively or a confidential talk, he would distribute a shower 
of pennies which enabled them to enter the longed-for precincts 
of the theatre. Indeed, his progress through the streets of 
Chelsea was incessantly interrupted to chat with some of his 
endless friends of all ranks and all ages in the locality ; and 
as he talked, his retentive brain was still storing up impressions 
for use in the many novels which he contemplated writing. 
' When a man arrives at my time of life,' he said one day, ' there 
is one question of paramount importance — the date of one's 
death. I feel more and more anxious to get all the definite 
book-scribbling done that I can do. It would be a great sell 
to have my materials outlast me ! I would sooner use them 
all up.' Meanwhile he looked forward with unshaken confidence 
to the time when Victory should crown the efforts of the Allies. 
' This war is an outbreak of diabolism which will pass,' he would 
say ; and one day he added quizzically, ' If only I had been 
translated into German, it would have prevented all this— 
what a pity ! ' 

He soon fell placidly into line with the unusual economic 
conditions, and it became a familiar sight to see his tall, slim 
figure hurrying briskly on a daily round among the provision 
shops in order to bespeak the small allowance of food available 
under the scheme of rationing then in force ' You met him 
in the morning,' related Mrs. Ady, ' doing his marketing and 
carrying provisions home ; and late in the dusk of the evening 
he was constantly to be seen setting out on a rapid walk along 
the Embankment. Often you caught sight of him stopping 
at a street corner in earnest conversation with a soldier in khaki 
just back from the front. The tall figure was slightly bowed 
with advancing years, and Time had whitened the locks and 
beard that were once a rich brown ; but the brisk, alert step 
md clear blue eyes with their frank kindly glance were still 
the same as ever.' 

As winter swept over the land — a winter of darkened streets, 



THE YOUNG MAN'S OLD AGE 363 

of air-raids, and scanty food — his thoughts sometimes turned 
longingly to peaceful days in the past spent in the bright cHmate 
of Italy. He would recall the happy week-ends at Villa Nuti, 
when his friend Spencer-Stanhope was still alive, and the walks 
up to Bellosquardo, when, as he and his wife climbed higher 
and higher, they watched the blood-red sunsets behind Monte 
Morello, or, later in the spring, the Val d'Arno smiling in the 
first flush of April loveliness. One bleak winter's day towards 
dusk Mrs, Ady relates how she encountered him as they were 
both passing a new Roman CathoHc church which had been 
built of recent years in Cheyne Row. The door stood open, 
and in the red glow within, they saw the priest reciting the 
office of Benediction, the clouds of incense rising heavenwards, 
and the gleam of silver and lighted candles showing brightly 
upon the altar. ' Ah,' exclaimed De Morgan, his thoughts 
reverting to Florence, ' I like that ! It makes me feel I am at 
home again ! ' Then it flashed across him that this church 
stood on the exact spot where his first pottery kiln had been set 
up in the garden of Orange House ; and, with a little laugh, 
he added : ' How odd I should have said that — of course, it 
really was my home ! ' 

Forgetful of the date, in November, 1915, De Morgan passed 
the anniversary of his seventy-sixth birthday ; and a little 
ch^Tdi,ctevistic jen-d' esprit connected with this may be mentioned. 
The present writer had written a book entitled A Painter of 
Dreams which, amongst other articles, contained a short life 
of Roddam Spencer-Stanhope, and which was dedicated to 
De Morgan in the following terms : — 

' To the author of When Ghost Meets Ghost and manj' other dehghtf ul 
works. 

A token of homage 

from 
A writer of facts 

to 
A writer of fiction. 

* I write of the Ghosts I hear of. 
You write of the Ghosts you see ; 
But never beneath our busy pens 

Or the fertile scope of our magic lens. 
Doth mingle that Company ! 

* Each apart in our land of Phantoms— 
The Dead, or the Never-have-been, 
We follow a lilting measure, 

We struggle for truth or for treasure. 
Unreal as a Painted Dream. 

* So I fathom a world extinguished ; j 
You fashion a mimic host ; 

We live in a separate Dreamland 
Where never can Ghost meet Ghost I ' 



364 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

The morning after his receipt of this book brought the 
following letter from De Morgan : — 

' Diana dear, upon my word 
It's really only just occurred 
To one who must be reckoned yaw 
Most absent-minded brother-in-law. 
That extra gratitude is due 
On this account from him to you ; — 
The book you gave him just this minutfr^ 
(Not a dull page, I warrant, in it !) 
Is of all gifts the gift most pleasant — 
An unexpected birthday present ! 
For Time still plays " his usual tricks'* 
And this day I am seventy-six 1 

* Only — and this was just like me ! 
The fact had slipped my memory. 

The old chap's scythe clears tracts on tracts 

And mows down unimportant facts. 

One trifle of his vivisection 

Has been my power of recollection. 

* My Ego doesn't care a damn — 
Take note of this — how old I am ! 

The reply. 

* Your verses written to Diana 

Have pleased her both in mood and manner ; 
Despite their reference to your age. 
She's stuck them on her title-page. 
And feels that all her labour past 
Is really valuable at last 1 

* But one thing strikes her very droll ; 
You have a wife — your life — your soul, 
Yet, while the years are swiftly fleeting. 
Nor birthday gift — nor birthday greeting 
Checks ofiE the flight of days so fair 
Between so chaste — so fond a pair ! 

' Tho' Time may play his tricks wath you. 
This should not be where one is two. 
(If one of us pursued this course, 
We'd think it grounds for a divorce ;) 
Your spouse (most peerless of all ladies) 
Should quickly be consigned to Hades. 

* All that remains for me to say 

Is — " happy returns " of yesterday ; 
Nor can I thus conclude my letter — 
Of years de-M ore-gone — well — de better 1 * 

Despite the prevailing horror which was eating into his 
heart and life, De Morgan's old sense of fun would not be re- 
pressed. ' I am not responsible for the following verses,' he 
wrote to a friend, ' but they so exactly describe my present 



THE YOUNG MAN'S OLD AGE 365 

state of mind and body, I feel as if I had written them ! ' and 
he quoted : — 

' My Tuesdays are meatless. 

My Wednesdays are wheatless, 

I am getting more eatless each day; 

My home it is heatless. 

My bed it is sheetless. 

They're all sent to the Y.M.C.A. 

The bar rooms are treatless. 

My coffee is sweetless, 

Each day I get poorer and wiser ; 

My stockings are feetless. 

My trousers are seatless : 

My ! How I do hate the Kaiser ! * 

* One day, early in the war,' relates Miss Holiday, * I had 
made an appointment to call for Mr. De Morgan and to walk 
with him to the studio in Edith Grove where Evelyn was housing 
the beautiful pictures she had brought over from Italy. Unfor- 
tunately I paid another visit en route where my hostess talked 
and talked and talked about the war without a single pause, and 
my heart sank lower and lower as the hands of the clock moved 
round, and I could seize no opportunity to leave. When at length 
I reached Church Street I explained the cause of my unpunctu- 
ality. " Well, you know," said De Morgan, " what one wants 
with people like that is an electric bell ; they talk and you wait 
just so long, and then you push down a button in the middle of 
a sentence, like a chairman at a meeting, and then they have to 
stop ; and then you g&t up and run away ! ' 

' We walked on to the studio, none the less discussing the one 
topic which occupied all our thoughts ; and I remarked on a 
horrible description in that day's papers of the way in which the 
Germans tied the bodies of their dead in bundles and stacked 
them upright in railway trucks for removal. " They are so 
dreadfully tidy!" he commented.' Yet although he obviously 
disliked speaking of the horrors which were being enacted, and 
usually tried to give another bend to any conversation which 
tended in that direction, he brooded continually upon the awful 
blight which had stricken humanity. In a httle notebook in 
which fleeting thoughts and scraps of dialogue were jotted down 
roughly by him for possible use in future books, there are also a 
number of pencilled couplets and longer verses which, though 
unfinished, and obviously regarded by him as a mere vent to 
his feelings, intended for no eye but his own, yet serve to reflect 
the trend of his mood at this date. Selection is difficult, and 
the following fragments are quoted somewhat at random : — 

' Crush or be crushed ! What would his profit be 
Who lived to be the thrall of this aggressor ? 
This Lord of all the World — his conscience free 
As each man's is, who is his own Confessor. 



366 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

* Who flings his solemn pledges in the dust. 

Whose plea for his dishonour all unmeet is^ 
His all-sufficient plea — " What must be must 

When drives the Devil ! — To the wind with Treaties 1 ** 

* Who vaunts his God, to justify his sin— 

His pigmy God, of his imagination — 
His God of Battles that he means to win 

And must, perforce, if he would rule creation. 

***** 

* Uproot your foe — annihilate his guns — 

With such as he all talk of Peace is vapour. 
Whatever Peace is made with modern Huns 
That Peace \vi\\ only be a piece of paper.' 



* " War is War," said the submarine 

To the merchant-skipper whose boat was filling, 
'' I have kept the Kaiser's conscience clean 

Though I sink your boat, I abstain from killing. 

* " None can say that the fault is mine ; 

Blame my foes, who yonder shores own. 
You are well aware you have crossed the line 

On the Kaiser's map, that bounds his War-Zone.** 

* Who shall oppose the maxims trite 

Of old sea-law to a Teuton thesis — 
Or dispute a German War-Lord's right 
To do whatever he damn well pleases ? 

'"You're very good," said the Skipper, " I'm sure; 
Your view of the case most apt and terse is. 
I quite perceive that War is War, 
And appreciate your tender mercies. 

' " And, further consolation find. 

That shot is shot, and shell is shell. 
It's just as well to bear in mind, 

That God is God, and Hell is Hell." ' 

Another poem, too long for adequate transcription, pleads 
that the ruins of Rheims Cathedral should be left untouched, 
' a heritage for Time,' since — 

' . . . No spurious birth 
Of false renewal can restore the spell 
Was theirs but yesterday. . . .' 

and he addresses the ' insolent Hohenzollem ' : -- 

' One day shall rise to execrate thy power. 
Even from thy native soil, no longer dumb, 
A thousand curses in the passing hour — 
A thousand thousand in the years to come. 

* Woe for those years to come ! Where is thy gain 

Wild Teuton beast, well baffled of thy prize ? 
On that audacious brow the brand of Cain, 
In that false heart the worm that never dies ' 



THE YOUNG MAN'S OLD AGE 367 

* But for these ruins — their unspoken speech. 

Their very silence, registers thy deed — 
Records thy shame — is eloquent to teach 
As taught the Nazarene of old. What need 

* To supersede his teaching ? Shall his plea 

For Peace on Earth remain an idle breath ? 
A ripple on the shores of Gahlee ? 

A murmur through the palms of Nazareth ? * 

Other verses, in disjointed couplets, were evidently also part 
of a long poem, but can now only be pieced together by guesswork 
in a fashion perhaps little indicative of the original intention 
of the writer. 

' Culture comes ! Let no man fail 
To render homage. Shout — All hail I 
Heralded by jargon rank. 
With taint of quack and mountebank. 
Her High Pontiff Terrorism 
Rules a Church without a schism. 
On whose altar hell-fire burns. 
Cant and blasphemy by turns . . • 
Musical with shot and shell, 
All the symphonies of Hell . . . 
A Kaiser for apostle crying 
In a wilderness of lying . . . 
Blare of trumpets — roll of drums 
Pan-Germanic Culture comes ! 



' Culture goes. And plundered marts. 
Ruined homesteads, broken hearts, 
Girlhood blasted, slaughter, wTack, 
Desolation — mark her track. 
Here the embers of a town. 
There the cross she trampled down. 
That small thing a baby's corse is 1 
That's a woman's — that's a horse's I 
Food for starving dog and cat I 
A father this — a mother that 
Her babe's experience of earth 
A bayonet before its birth. 
That carrion flung beside the way 
And this — were lovers yesterday. 
By these things I understand 
Cultiu-e has swept across the land.* 

To Professor Phelps De Morgan wrote in the following 
December : — 

* 127 Church Street, 
' Chelsea, 

' Dec. 20th, 1915, 
' I have just received from the Authors' Clipping Co. the Boston Weekly 
Herald of 28th ult. in which you appear retailed by an appreciative inter- 
viewer. I always feel that I should agree with you about the books you 



368 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

criticize. So when I am asked for an opinion of a work I haven't read, 
yours is one I am very apt to repeat. I know you are a safe man. 

' I have more often not read than read any book — I find I can't fix 
my attention closely enough on any modern noveUst to find out what he 
means. It may be because I am really a fossil — a survival of a brain in 
a Neanderthal skull, that is allowed to write what he omitted to write 
forty years ago — and that I can't enter into modern ideas. Or it may be, 
more likely, that I am, as I always think Haydn's Gipsy Rondo says, 
" jolly sick and tired of the wliole turn out ! " and can't concentrate. I 
can't read a vivid description — ^it calls for such a tremendous effort of the 
imagination to " realize " it, as they say nowadays. Whenever I read a 
newspaper column I wonder how soon the writer will say that somebody 
doesn't "realize" — or whether he will first "point out" — like B'rer 
Rabbit. But that's neither here nor there ! 

' I put aside my long novel,* because with Kultur in full swing I felt 
I should spoil it. I took up an old beginning — sketched in immediately 
after Joe Vance — and have got about half-way through, with great difficulty. 
The trail of the poison gas is over us all here, and I can only get poor 
comfort from thinking what a many submarines we have made permanently 
so. All the same, one of my favourite employments is thinking how to 
add to their number — a grisly committee — coffins full of men very like 
our own. For all seamen are noble, because they live face to face with 
Death. 

' I won't twaddle on to a second sheet, but will be content to say how 
glad I am to know you are still going strong, and to send you cordial good 
wishes for the current new year and Xraas. My wife joins me in all kind 
remembrances to you and yours, 

' Always yours, 

' Wm. De Morgan.' 

With unfailing generosity De Morgan contributed to war- 
time charities, while his pen worked nimbly in constant propa- 
ganda designed to promote a better comprehension, both at 
home and abroad, of the cause in which England was ungrudgingly 
expending blood and gold. But when he was asked to send a 
large consignment of his books to many of the hospitals, he 
agreed only on the condition that other authors joined in the 
undertaking — ' Otherwise,' he explained, ' it would look so 
bumptious ! ' This impression was perhaps confirmed by a 
letter from Mrs. Mackail describing the effect of such a gift to 
a non-military hospital. 

Margaret Mackail to Evelyn De Morgan. 

' Thanks for the hospital. Once on my rounds there I approached 
the bed of a man with a bundle of books in my arms and asked him if 
he would like one. He answered, " Thank you, I am very well acquainted 
with literature, and have no need of books." 

' I then addressed myself to conversation, and said, rather foolishly, 
that I always felt sorry for the men being cut o£E their tobacco while in 
hospital, for it passed the time. His reply was in these Bible words which 
impressed themselves for ever on an otherwise not retentive memory : — • 

' The Old Man's Youth and the Young Man's Old Age, 




Study in Chalk for thk Moonbeams Dipping into the Sea 
Evelyn De Morgan pinxit 

[In the possession of Mrs. Stirling. 



THE YOUNG MAN'S OLD AGE 369 

' " Thank you, I have my passions and appetites so completely under 
control that it is a matter of indifference to me of what pleasure I am 
deprived." 

' So then I went on to the next bed hoping that it would be a long time 
before he got well enough to leave, so that his wife might have a real 
holiday from him. 

' So you see what an excellent hospital it is.' 

Evelyn likewise agreed to have an exhibition in her studio 
of the series of symbolic * War-pictures ' on which she had been 
engaged ; and although at this exhibition none of her work 
was for sale, and the money was procured by entrance fees only, 
she thus secured a considerable sum for the English and Italian 
Red Cross charities. Among many letters subsequently received 
by her was the following from an artist, then in his eighty-fifth 
year, the senior member of the International Peace Bureau.^ 



Felix Moscheles to Evelyn De Morgan. 

' The Grelix, 
' 80 Elm Park Road, S.W. 
• Dear Mrs. De Morgan, — 

' I came — I saw — and you conquered 1 Once more I was fully 
impressed by the loftiness of your conceptions which pervade all your 
work, and by the masterly execution which enables you to give concrete 
form to your abstract ideals. Your drawing severely discards the non- 
essential and your colours are merged like those of the rainbow that pro- 
mises peace and harmonies. Recalling your pictures I seem to hear your 
triumphant Angels singing Hallelujah ! as they repulse my well-hated 
enemy, the Demon of War. Thanks I More verbally. 

' Most sincerely Yrs., 

' Felix Moscheles. 
' March 20 — 1916.' 

As the Great Powers closed in a yet tighter death- grip, while 
thrones and nationalities rocked with the clash of am'iS and 
toppled to their ruin, De Morgan became more and more obsessed 
with the nightmare of the fray. He could no longer pursue his 
peaceful, leisurely fiction. ' I find I can't write worth a cent,' 
he remarked sadly to his cousin Walter De Morgan ; ' German 
Culture has shadowed everything — my mind included. This 
hideous war has knocked me silly, and I can think of nothing 
but how to tackle submarines — that is the great problem nowa- 
days. If they can't be squashed, civihzation may go to the 
wall.' To an American author, Mr. Williams, who sent him a 
copy of his first novel, he explained : — 

» This Bureau used to be the standing committee of all the Peace 
Societies of the world. Felix Moscheles, in honour of whose birth Felix 
Mendelssohn composed his ' Cradle Song,' was also for many years 
President of the International Arbitration Association. 

AA 



370 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

' 127 Church Street, 

' Chelsea, S.W., 

' 4 June, 1916. 
' I have received your book, and thank you most cordially for sending 
it to me. But I am afraid it must wait a while for me to have any chance 
of reading it with any enjoyment. Many books are waiting for me to 
recover some power of fixing my attention on a page of print. It is 
literally true that I have lost all power of following a story, however 
consecutively it may be written. I trace this partly to writing overmuch 
myself, at too advanced an age ; partly to the constant wear and tear of 
nerves from the terrible strife of the times. Until we may say again 
cedant arma togae, concedat laurea laudi, the arts and literature must take 
a back seat. 

' But thank you again for sending it to me. I hope History and 
Sanity may shake hands, and allow me to complete a book of ray own, and 
to read some one else's. 

Very truly yours, 
' Wm. De Morgan.' 

To Mr. Ellis at this date he ako observed : — 

' 23ri Jiine, 1916. 

' I find the only time I succeed in writing is the afternoon ; as the 
day's work is liable to be spoilt if I go out late, the conjunction of cir- 
cumstances practically keeps me from going out, at least until I see my 
way to the end. . . . The war has paralysed my inventive powers, or 
such as are left of them and I can't get ahead. 

' We may see better days soon — let us hope for them ! ' 

' Nov. i8th, 1916. 
' You are quite right in saying I never go out — I don't and shan't till 
the Allies are in Berlin — I may go then, as things seem now ! I was 77 
two days ago ! ! ! ' 

To his cousin, Walter De Morgan, he wrote again that same 
year :— 

' I try to write but don't succeed. How can one do anything with 
the world as it is ? 

' I am interesting myself more and more in Aircraft, Submarines, 
Torpedoes, etc. If I was a millionaire I should have a thousand experi- 
ments going on. 

' Have you ever seen a real torpedo ? What is his nose Hke — pointed 
or capped ? I have seen pictures of both. Perhaps one was his war- 
nose, and the other for common use. 

' Better luck to us all next century ! ' 

As his power of concentration upon literary work diminished, 
his old love of scientific experiment revived. The prosecution of 
modern warfare under novel conditions had roused all his former 
enthusiasm for scientific research ; and every possible means 
for circumventing attacks from the enemy absorbed his attention. 
A great part of his time was now devoted to making experiments 
at the Polytechnic, where he approached each problem with 
the enthusiasm of a boy ; and many were the carefully worked- 
out schemes and inventions which he sent up to the War Office 
or to the Board of Admiralty, most of these showing a knowledge 



THE YOUNG MAN'S OLD AGE 371 

of technical detail as minute as though he had devoted a lifetime 
to their elucidation. ' Thus,' wrote his wife regretfully, later, 
' much valuable time was stolen from literature.' Moreover, as 
in his youth, his zeal soon outsped his discretion ; and on one 
occasion when a public room had been lent to him for the purpose 
of prosecuting an experiment, he successfully achieved an explo- 
sion which blew out all the windows ; after which it was politely 
intimated to him that his presence would, in future, be dispensed 
with. 

' Innocently expecting the hydrogen to burn like a Christian, with a 
lambent flame, scarcely visible by daylight,' [he explained when referring 
to this incident], ' we put a match to the hydrogen bottle. It busted with 
a loud report and blew out a lot of glass. . . . Mr. Skinner, the Principal 
at the Polytechnic, tells me that Dewar made a lot of experiments on the 
knack hydrogen has of escaping. Really, Jack Sheppard and Monte- 
cristo are not in it ! ' 

Despite this misadventure, however, he still wrote triumph- 
antly : ' I have got no end of inventions afoot, though I am not 
absolutely certain of any but one — a new airship. So I shall 
only push that one.' It is sad to reflect that it was this very 
enthusiasm which brought to pass the final tragedy. ' Things 
seldom happen to me quite as they happen to other folk,' he said 
once ; and even Death came to him in unusual guise. 

The story must be told from a personal standpoint. 

There are days in life which remain for ever after stamped 
on the memory with a vividness out of all proportion to their 
actual importance. Their very triviality becomes memorized 
in its placid contrast to some tragic sequel. So it is with the 
closing scenes of De Morgan's life. 

Christmas Day, 1916, passed peacefully, with its immunity 
from air-raids and its increased allowance of provisions, having 
even a semblance of festivity. William and Evelyn came to 
luncheon, and never had he seemed in better health and spirits. 
The constitutional delicacy which had haunted his younger 
days seemed to have passed, leaving in its stead an autumnal 
vigour of mind and body which belied the seventy-seven years 
of a busy life that had drifted over him — beHed, above all, the 
stress of the last ten years and of all which he had accomplished 
since the publication of Joseph Vance. He talked happily, full 
of hope and confidence in the ultimate good which he felt sure 
was approaching a stricken, blood-stained world. A vista of 
peaceful days and renewed capacity for work seemed to stretch 
before him. Even the crimson roses — a Christmas gift — with 
which the table was decorated in profusion, were to him a happy 
augury of summer and sunshine, while he dwelt with aesthetic 
pleasure on their gorgeous petals showing in velvet beauty against 
the dark oak and shining silver. 



372 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

On the morrow, Boxing Day, the visit was returned. Wc 
groped our way through the darkened streets to Church Street, 
and found Wilham and his wife dispensing tea to a sohtary visitor 
in khaki. The stranger, we learnt, was an officer from the 
front ; he had come from France on the previous day ; and hav- 
ing read Joseph Vance in the trenches he had determined that 
his first visit in England should be to the author of the book he 
had so much enjoyed. ' There was a Fate about it,' Evelyn 
remarked lightly. ' Knowing the servants would be out to-day, 
I wrote to tell him not to come, but he never got the letter.' 
There was a Fate about it, perhaps, of which she little dreamed. 

We sat on through the dusk, the room lit only by dim candles 
and the ruddy gleam of the fire. As desultory talk rose and 
fell, it transpired that the officer was in the Air Force, and William 
eagerly seized upon the opportunity thus afforded to gain informa- 
tion on a problem connected with his new flying machine which 
had baffled him. ' I wish you would look at a model of an 
aeroplane I am constructing,' he said. ' Come to my study — 
the light is better there for seeing it.' The two men left the 
room. For half an hour they were shut up in close proximity 
in William's little sitting-room ; then they returned ; and the 
stranger said good-bye. 

Out in the hall we heard them talking. William had dis- 
covered connecting links among acquaintances common to them 
both, and was plying his new friend with questions concerning 
these. The stranger's final answer came with a note of melan- 
choly : ' My father is dead, my mother is dead ; my aunt whom 
you remember is dead— every one connected with me is dead. 
Good-bye.' And as William came back into the room he observed 
quaintly in reference to the visitor's last remark, ' Well — that's 
a nice cheerful state of affairs — Every one connected with him is 
dead ! I thought, under the circumstances, there was only one 
thing to be done — so I gave him a copy of When Ghost Meets 
Ghost ! ' 

That was on Tuesday. On the following Friday evening, 
December 29, William, feeling strangely tired, laid down his 
pen in the middle of an unfinished sentence in The Old Mad 
House. By the morning he was ill ; before nightfall he was 
raving in the delirium of trench fever. For seventeen days that 
continued ; and during all that time he believed he was a wounded 
soldier in a hospital in France. With piteous reiteration he kept 
imploring that some one would take him back to his home — tc 
his wife, while she, poor soul, sat, a frozen image of grief, waiting 
for the one moment of recognition, the one word of farewell 
which was never granted. On the seventeenth day he found 
rest ; and she was left to face a darkened world with a broken 
heart. 



THE YOUNG MAN'S OLD AGE 373 

And as he lay dead, the following letter came : — 

A Stranger to William De Morgan, 

' Washington, 

' January 1st, 1917. 

* Dear Father of Joey and Lossie, Saucy Sally, loving little Lizerann 
and brave blind Jim, sweet old Mrs. Picture and darling Alice-for-Short, 
on this bright 'New Year's day I want to write to you friendlywise. I truly 
believe that the people you have created for me are more real, more 
tangible, more comfortable, than any others I have met, in literature, or 
out of it. 

' In this present tragic hour your books have been my greatest comfort 
— for your view of life, too, is the real one — more real than the other, I 
keep telling myself. Some day we humans now at variance will be able 
to understand each other once more, and once more find each other kind 
and amusing, and good for every-day hard wear. 

' You taught me to love a good fight ; but I can't love this fight, or 
feel hopeful of the sort of blessings which vnll be the outcome. . . . Then 
I remember such affection as Lizerann's and Blind Jim's — so lovely, it is 
its own excuse for being ; and then I remember that, before the war there 
was a man in England whose books oozed love and tenderness in every 
line, not by preachments, but by a gracious, mirthful humour vs^hich 
warms and heartens. There is no "for a' that'' with you. The trim- 
mings are all in the picture — a necessary part or background — explaining, 
heightening, vivifying each character, never condemning by excuse. 

' I wish you a happy New Year, wondering what new brain-children 
for us to love you are creating now — if (shall I say as I pray God is the 
case ?) — you can still write to the thunder of the guns.' 

During the days which followed, other letters came to the 
silent house, bringing the balm of a sympathy expressed in sor- 
rowing words : ' How sad it all is ! ' Sir William Richmond 
wrote to Evelyn. ' How I feci for you in the loss of your com- 
panion, and such a gentle one, for so many years. ... He 
never grew old, he changed nothing since I first knew him fifty- 
six years ago. I expect, with his ups and downs counted, he had 
a very happy life, such simple characters usually have.' ' He 
was a wonderful man,' wrote Sir Edward Poynter, ' and his 
beautiful nature came out in his books and his intercourse with 
his friends. I do not beheve he ever had an evil thought in his 
life. Everybody who knew him will regret his loss and his 
deHghtfully sympathetic and amusing conversation.' Maurice 
Hewlett likewise wTote : ' I value everything I can remember 
of him. I feel myself the better man for having known him. 
As for his books, they are part of himself, and I have almost 
made them part of myself ; they are unique, as all books must 
be which faithfully express so rare a spirit as his. Those who 
love them will not let them die ; and the number of their lovers 
will increase.' 

One letter of a more personal nature may perhaps be 
quoted : — 



374 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

Lady Burne-Jones to Mrs. De Morgan. 

' ROTTINGDEAN, 

' Jan. 19, 1917. 
'My poor dear Girl (always that to me), — 

' The news of your bereavement only reached me this morning, and 
is hard to believe. Yours was one of the blessed marriages, and it will 
never end, but the pain of this separation cannot be expressed either by 
you or your friends. I only write to say that I have heard of it, and that 
I am with you at heart. 

' I long to know something of you — and shall do so in time . . . a1 
such a time, however, details have ceased to be important — all is swallowed 
up in the tremendous fact. 

' The thought of trench-fever and its seeking a victim here is tragic 
among a thousand tragedies. I heard that he took the war very much tc 
heart. . . . 

' I have a treasured remembrance of the last time I saw him when I 
was cheered to see him loolcing better and younger than when we had met 
before. . . . His immovable friendship is in no way dimmed to me by 
death — as it never was by distance of time or place ; for me he cannot 
die, but still lives, amongst memories that nothing can wipe out. And foi 
this I am very thankful. 

' For all the long years of our unchanging friendship I tliank God ; 
and for how much more must you have to return thanks, — none but 
yourself knows. In these terrible days it is beautiful to feel that the 
best things remain unchanged, and that Love is still the key of the world. 

' My dear, forgive these stumbling words — but it touches me to the 
heart for you. 

' Always your affectionate old friend, 

' G. BURNE-JONES.' 

By and by, hundreds wrote from all parts of the world, and 
one perhaps spoke the feelings of all those unknown friends : — 

' I never saw him, yet I feel, as many will feel when they read the 
news of his death, that I have lost a dear friend. I am reading his last 
book, and in reading I seem to know the tone of his voice and to feel the 
sunshine of his spirit. He has left a very precious legacy to a world which 
will not forget. 

Among the many Obituary notices which appeared after his 
death one in the Manchester Guardian may be cited for its especial 
insight : — 

* With the death of Mr. William De Morgan our day suffers a loss of 
a kind it can very ill afford. Intellectual brilliancy is fairly common 
among us, but intellectual brilliancy entirely subdued to the service oi 
observation and sympathy is exceedingly rare. . . . 

' His peculiar achievement lies in the degree in which he has placed 
the characteristics of our contemporary life in permanent horizons. . . . 
From his vantage ground of years he has perceived characteristics of our 
generation as we who belong to it never could have done. His open- 
mindedness and perception have been amazing ; to the end he was singu- 
larly up-to-date, singularly an fait with all the most modern of our pessi- 
misms ; yet ever and always he has seen the heart of life as " somehow 
good " ; all his complex understanding resulted only in the deepening 
and strengthening of his humanity and his hope. He has understood 
the complexities of modern existence (had he not, he would have been 



THE YOUNG MAN'S OLD AGE 375 

of small use to our day). But beneath and behind these things he ever 
recalls us, should we perchance have forgotten them, to the simple well- 
springs of happiness and of life. 

' Foremost, perhaps, in our gratitude to-day will be thanks for the 
laughter, the rolUcking entertainment he has given us. His books have 
brimmed with a fun that in its breadth and its sanity is almost Shake- 
spearean. . . . Yet it is on the deepest, the most serious of notes 
that our tribute, if it is to touch the highest of his gifts, must come 
to rest. Passionate lover of human beauty that hb was, Mr. De 
Morgan had to outlive the most splendid and vital of his comrades. 
Before he began writing books the engrossing question seemed to him to 
be (and is there any other that really appears engrossing as life goes on ?) 
the question as to personal immortaUty, the nature of human identity. 
That problem Mr. De Morgan was pursuing from the first to the last of 
his novels. Which of us who has read it can forget the " ghost in the 
corpse " conversation in Joseph Vance ; which of us has dared to question 
Lizerann's appearance to Jim Coupland at the moment of his death ; 
which of us has not wrestled, battled alongside as it were, the facing of 
the problem from its roots in When Ghost Meets Ghost ? 

' This, then, among innumerable minor gifts, is Mr. De Morgan's 
priceless bequest to us. He has stood outside (almost aggressively out- 
side) religious denominations. That, perhaps, is what has given his 
" neither doth corruption inherit in corruption " its bell-like and resonant 
quality. He felt, and out of the depth and richness of his feeling he has 
communicated to us, poignant sadness at the transiency of life upon 
earth. Artist that he was, he roight, as the lesser artists almost always 
have done, have employed his powers in building palaces, " poetic " 
shelters from the facts, for himself and his peers. He chose, instead, to 
face life unfhnchingly. He took the myriad facets, activities, perversities 
of contemporary society, and so endeared to us person after person and 
type after type that with his gallery — his revelation of underlying unity 
and beauty — before us we dare not, while his spell is over us at least, 
doubt that there is something more eternal in human personaUty than in 
any of the phenomena enveloping existence.* 

In life, De Morgan had more than once been compared to 

his own heroine Lossie, of whom it was said that when she entered 

a room it was as though some one had suddenly drawn up the 

bhnds and let in the sunshine. A many-sided genius, with his 

wonderful work as a ceramic artist, his knowledge as a scientist 

and an inventor, and his final revelation as a novelist, he had 

been acclaimed as an Idealist and yet a Realist, a resuscitation 

from a long-dead Past, and yet a modem of the modems. But 

the aspect of his character which, in death, dwelt most linger- 

ingly in the hearts of his fellows was his gift of eternal youth, 

of immortal hope, of inextinguishable love and laughter. In 

their remembrance he lived as they had known him — delightful 

in his simplicity, his kindly spirit, his bubbling fun, his unruffled 

contentment — a man who, to the last, had retained, untarnished, 

the heart of a little child. 

* * * * « 

On January 23 the mortal remains of William De Morgan 
were borne to the Old Church, facing the grey river; that 



376 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

ancient building which for so many years in his thoughts had 
enshrined the history and the romance of Chelsea. There under 
a violet pall he slept, while in the grey light of a wintry day 
sweet boy-voices sang his requiem. Among the mourners were 
the children and the grandchildren of Bume-Jones, and the 
daughter of William Morris ; while numbers who had never 
known him in life came to pay a last tribute to the man whose 
genius had gladdened them, and whose rare personality had won 
an affection such as few men win. Thus amidst the music and 
the flowers he had once rejoiced in, he passed on to his final 
resting-place in Brookwood Cemetery, then a lovely space of 
unspoilt moorland, where, about the spot chosen for his grave, 
the heather grew thickly, and the wind in the pine-trees sang an 
eternal dirge. And there, as the coffin sank to earth, Florentine 
blossoms from the land he had loved mingled with the snowflakes 
which were falling fast, while from the silence that had engulfed 
him one seemed to hear again the voice of the brave spirit which 
had fled :— 

' I am ready for extinction or extension, whichever and whenever. 
Only if the latter, all I stipulate for is absolute good on the terms that 
the Master shall manage it, and that we shall all be safeguarded against 
the rack of this tough world.' 




William Frend De Morgan, 
1839-1917. 

Artist. : Potter : Inventor : Novelist. 
" Sorrow is only of Earth, 
The life of the Spirit is joy." 
Bead-stone designed ly Evelyn De Moroan for the grave of William De Morgan. 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE 'LONG DIMINUENDO* 
1917-1919 

* If Chance should to my workshop send 
A certain silent fleshless friend, 
Then while Day lasts Thy legions lend 
And hold him from the stair ! 
But when the best tool slips away, 
And he would idle who miast stay, 
If once against the Dark I'd pray— 
Deliver me from prayer ! ' 

LITTLE more remains to tell ; and it must be told in a 
minor key. In the solitary home Evelyn De Morgan 
took up life again with a fine courage, but a grief so intense that 
before it even sympathy was hushed to silence. Body and soul 
were alike smitten by the blow which had fallen ; and during the 
dark months which followed, it was as though the frail tenement, 
propelled by an indomitable will but waxing ever more and more 
ethereal, fought on pathetically, while the spirit which had ani- 
mated it was far away. Looking at her sometimes one thought 
of a sentence which her husband had written in his last book : 
' All the Hereafters in the Universe would be no worse for me 
than life in the dark without you, here and now.' 

' One felt,' relates Miss Morris, ' that it was only her high 
courage and that instinct spoken of by William Morris as " desir- 
ing to see the play played out " that kept her spirit batthng here. 
The house was empty, the hearth cold ; often on visiting her, 
amid pauses in some intimate evening of music and talks of 
Italy and former days, with her portrait of the old friend looking 
down upon us and his work all about, one felt this acutely, and 
behind the cheery good-night was the unspoken understanding 
and the shared sense of loss.' 

But there was work still to be accompHshed, and she grasped 
the severed threads of life bravely. ' Mr, De Morgan,' announced 
the Press, ' has done what none of his readers will ever be able 
to do — he has left one of his novels unfinished ! ' Moreover, the 
chain of coincidence connected with his fiction had followed it 

.^77 



378 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

to the last, and the similarity between the uncompleted novel 
by Charles Dickens, and the uncompleted novel. The Old Mad 
House, by De Morgan, was at once remarked, since both dealt 
with the mysterious disappearance of one of the characters. 
But in De Morgan's case he had discussed the denouement with 
his wife, and she was enabled to supply the missing finale. As 
his work had first owed its existence to her, so she now determined 
that no measure of it should be wasted. 

With a skill which requires no comment, she summarized 
the conclusion he had projected, condensing the remainder of 
a long and intricate plot into one brief chapter, revealing the 
mystery on which the tale had hinged in language so simple 
and yet so graphic that the horror of the culminating tragedy 
is accentuated by her reticence ; while the reader can feel no 
disruption in the continuity of the story, no alteration in the 
manner of its telling from the point where she took up the pen 
that had fallen from a dead hand. The whole was dedicated 
by her to the American readers whose appreciation of the 
deceased novelist's work had given him some of the happiest 
moments of his life. 

This novel, however, of which she never lived to see the 
publication, is, admittedly, not the best specimen of De Morgan's 
fiction. At the time of writing it, as we have seen, he had been 
too much obsessed with other thoughts — the lure of numberless 
scientific experiments and inventions on which he was engaged, 
the nightmare and the tension of the war — all had combined to 
distract his attention ; and revision had subsequently been 
denied him. Thus, despite the undoubted interest of the volume, 
one misses in it something of the charm of his happier manner — 
the shrewd philosophy, the quaint conceits, the nimble wit — 
in brief, * the personahty which is all in all in the De Morgan 
novels.' 

The other unfinished manuscript which he had judiciously 
set aside fearing to ' spoil it ' during a period of mental tension, 
would undoubtedly, if concluded, have been one of his finest 
achievements, a greater and more ' complete human document ' 
even than Joseph Vance. It was to have consisted of two volumes, 
one which dealt with the Old Man's Youth, and the other, of 
profound pathos, which told the story of the Young Man's Old 
Age ; yet when the tragedy occurred which the writer had 
dreaded, and his materials outlasted him, it is a matter of con- 
gratulation that such portion of the novel as he left had not 
been marred by any unwise attempt on his part to whip a tired 
brain into producing inferior workmanship. 

At first, however, Heinemann pronounced this latter manu- 
script to be too incomplete to make pubhcation possible. For 
the chapters were left in confusion ; in some cases different 



THE 'LONG DIMINUENDO' 379 

versions of them existed ; the gaps between them had too often 
no connecting links ; and, above all, the plot lacked all hint of 
its intended conclusion. The difficulty of rendering the whole 
readable without interference with the text seemed insurmount- 
able ; but, by and by, Evelyn saw her way to furnishing the 
necessary links while leaving her husband's original work un- 
touched ; and the Narrative of Eustace John, written by De 
Morgan, is connected by chapters entitled The Story, afterwards 
supplied by his wife. 

A small section of the Press later found cause to regret that 
the book had not been left precisely as its author, William De 
Morgan, wrote it, without those interpolations by a different 
hand ; but such critics, who were in the minority, failed to grasp 
how, without the explanations thus afforded, the narrative 
lacked in point and even coherence. ' Mrs. De Morgan has done 
a very difficult task most admirably,' pronounced Professor 
Phelps ; and it was pointed out how her workmanship was like 
that of a clever architect who skilfully conserves the original 
beauty of some structure through his own self-effacement. For 
never did she obtrude her own personality ; neither did she 
yield to the temptation to imitate or to emulate De Morgan's 
own methods. She supplied only what was essential — what she 
knew the author himself had intended — and she presented this in 
a fashion pithy, concise and forcible, but wholly distinct from 
his narrative, which, by this means was left intact.^ 

Eighteen months after De Morgan's death, another group 
of distinguished people met in the Old Church by the river to 
do honour to his memory. On July 11, 1918, one more monu- 
ment of interest was added to the history of that ancient building 
by the unveiling of a tablet placed there in remembrance of the 
dead author. Both as a ceramic artist and as a novelist it 
was felt that De Morgan's work had primarily centred in Chelsea 
— first at Orange House, then at the Vale, and then, during the 
last phase, in Church Street ; and it seemed fitting to com- 
memorate in Chelsea the man who had added yet another 
name to the roll of celebrated men connected with that 
locality. 

His old friend and associate, Mr. Halsey Ricardo, Past Master 
of the Art Workers' Guild, undertook the design of the memorial ; 
his other friend and associate, Mr. Reginald Blunt, worded the 
inscription, which ran as follows : — 

* It is to be regretted that this book was pubHshed in England with 
the original title {The Old Man's Youth and the Young Man's Old Age) 
curtailed, and thus bereft of its originality and point, an alteration to 
which neither De Morgan nor his wife would have consented. 



38o WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 



To the Memory of 

WILLIAM FREND DE MORGAN 

Artist — Potter — Inventor — Novelist 

Bom i6th November 1839 Died 15th January 191 7 

Who did much of his best work in Cheyne Row, The Vale and Church St., Chelsea 
— where he died 

Recreating in Ceramic work upon his own vigorous designs the colour of the 

Persian & the lustre of the great Umbrian craftsmen, 
Enriching literature by his faithful & sympathetic presentment of homely & very 

human character. 

And beloved by all who knew his breadth of intellectual interest, his catholic 

sympathy, genial humour & lambent wit. 

This Tablet is Dedicated by some of His Chelsea and Personal Friends. 



When the day arrived for the ceremony of the unveihng, 
the service which preceded this took place to the accompaniment 
of a strange July thunderstorm which blared and crashed with 
relentless fury, alternately plunging the picturesque building into 
gloom, then lighting the dim arches with a lurid gleam. But its 
rage was spent and, with dramatic effect, a great stillness fell 
as Miss May Morris, standing in a pew against the north aisle, 
uncovered the memorial of her father's life-long friend. With 
eloquent, heartfelt words she spoke of the man who was gone 
from among them so suddenly ' with work unfulfilled, the brain 
still rich in invention ... in all the dignity of his hopeful 
labours.' Then her thoughts turned to the bygone days with 
which her own girlhood was linked — to those earlier labours of 
the dead man with which her own recollection of the past 
mingled : — 

' It is over those activities that I love to linger in thought, for, fully 
as I deUght in the power, the charm of his literary work, the earlier days 
were more closely linked with the life of my own family ; De Morgan 
was one of the circle of friends who rejoiced in each other in work-days 
and play-days, who had ideals in common, who shared a common language 
and understood without language. The story of that bonded life is 
written in heart and brain of those who had part in it ; you who are all 
friends here will understand that the best of those days one prefers to 
remember in silence. . . . 

' Men test their friendship as well as character less by working together 
than by playing together ; many have worked side by side all their lives 
yet never shared their holiday time. To unbend in common and enjoy 
each other's quaintnesses, to court the shout of laughter without fear of 
spoiling or of wasting the common stock or capital of love, this is the 
privilege of the men whose lives were built up on generosity, a free giving 
of themselves and their love and their talent, and who understood so well 
the maxim " Live with courage." 

' I have come from my river-side home to share with you this recording 
of our friendship, and there is not an alley of the old garden that does not 
echo with the laughter of those days. . . .' 



THE 'LONG DIMINUENDO' 381 

She went on to speak of the dream long cherished by her 
father and De Morgan that they should combine their two arts — 

' and work side by side in a beautiful corner of the Cotswold country 
which we visited on one of our family excursions. Perhaps the time was 
not ripe for such a revival of Rural Handicrafts as this would have been 
in the hands of two men of abnormal energy and ceaseless invention, but 
it was long talked of and given up with regret. Their happy dream of 
utilizing the handsome old factories still existing everywhere with their 
clusters of sturdy well-built cottages, and thus without defacing the 
country beauty, starting the revival of the old rural industry of England, 
this dream may prove to be more immediately if humbly practical than 
might be supposed. In those days it was not considered outside our 
circle, but smiled at and waved aside. If it does become a reahty, it 
must be remembered with gratitude that De Morgan was among the pioneers 
who spread thoughts that blossom into deeds, and that his spirit, with all its 
old generosity, will be active still among the forces that are to compel 
great changes on the inertia and anarchy of modern life. . . .' 

She further dwelt on the fact that though, in practice, in his 
later years, De Morgan had left behind him the activities of 
earlier life, his old zest in matters of art or invention was never 
lost, and how one of the last things he was employed on was an 
invention for use in the war. 

' All of us standing here,' she concluded, ' will remember De Morgan 
in our hearts, needing not this material record of him. It is for the stranger 
who comes to pray in the Old Church that we raise it, and for the younger 
people — ^those who have, perhaps, played as children beside hearths 
decorated with ships from fairy seas that have moved their young imagina- 
tion, and that they have dimly known as " De Morgan work " ; let them — ■ 
beginning to take the place of us older ones in the life of art and invention — • 
remember, rather with kindness and friendship than with hero worship, 
the names of the noble throng of men and women whose thoughts and 
deeds are inevitably knit up with the stuff of their own lives — among them 
the name of our friend.' 

As reported in the Press, the next speaker, Mr. Edmund 
Gosse, began by referring to the great adventure of De Morgan's 
life, his first becoming an author in his sixty-seventh year, at an 
age before which Balzac and Dickens, Fielding and Zola had long 
been dead. After enumerating his successive novels, Mr. Gosse 
thus defined the central quality of De Morgan's work in fiction : — 

' I am very much struck with the tranquiUity of De Morgan's novels. 
There seems no stress in them, no anxiety. They move in a social world 
where the family is not challenged, where religion is quietly respected, 
where property enjoys all its rights and where the army scarcely seems to 
exist. What leisure for reflection, what long hours extended in an easy 
chair ! De Morgan seems to be so calmly assured of the stability of the 
social order that even those errors and those paradoxes which he observes 
will not avail to disturb his equilibrium. What a storm of social rebellion 
blows under the smiling surface of Dickens ! What revolt against con- 
vention in Meredith ! What sullen resignation to fate in the vast romances 
of Thomas Hardy ! — William De Morgan has no belief in the approach 
of a catastrophe. 



382 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

' Reviewing other characteristics of his literary work, Mr. Gosse 
mentioned De Morgan's love of his fellow-men as an outstanding feature : — 
" His temperament, whether in his writing or his axt, presented an image 
of serene confidence in humanity not found elsewhere. His style ignored 
the French manner altogether ; he did not teach, he talked, and that 
leisurely, with a pervading, tranquil optimism. His books had uniformity 
and a vi\nd individuality, although qualities such as form and construction 
were matters of indifierence to their author. He was a true artist, and 
in these iron times, we do well to remember his gentle, loving and 
loveable individuality." 

' Professor Mackail followed, and completed the tribute to De Morgan 
as an artist and a writer in a fine scholarly speech, adding a touching, 
sympathetic appreciation of the man and the friend. He emphasized 
De Morgan's wide range of interests, his close touch with the complexities 
of London life and London types, and his literary kinship with Henry 
Kingsley, whose young days were associated with Chelsea Rectory and 
Chelsea Church. . . .' 

Thus closed the simple ceremony which, in its unaffected 
tribute of affection and admiration, was fitting to the man it 
was designed to commemorate ; and which moreover, to many 
present, seemed to knit in romantic sequence a long train of 
illustrious dead whose memorials hung upon the ancient walls, 
linking the days of William De Morgan to the far-away days of 
his precursor in literature. Sir Thomas More. 

Meanwhile, Evelyn De Morgan was engaged upon a memorial 
of a different type. She had designed and modelled a headstone 
for her husband's grave which was afterwards carved in marble 
under the supervision of Sir George Frampton, and is a work 
of beauty and pathos. The fine disposal of the draperies, the 
grace of the outhne noticeable throughout, are yet subordinate 
to the pervading sense which it conveys of repressed but poignant 
tragedy. Two figures are represented in bas-relief. One, a 
mourner, bowed with grief, is extinguishing a lighted torch. 
All the anguish of a great separation, all the sorrow of a broken 
heart, seem expressed in the profound dejection of that drooping 
figure ; and the face is the face of Evelyn De Morgan. In striking 
contrast, by the side of the sorrowful form a winged and joyous 
Psyche, with airy poise and happy gesture, is striving to wean 
her from her grief. Beneath is inscribed a sentence which 
occurred in one of the letters from ' Angels ' written in automatic 
writing by Evelyn and her husband : — 

'Sorrow is only of Earth; the life of the Spirit is joy.' 

While this bas-relief was being completed, Evelyn was likewise 
painting with the persistence of happier days. The keynote of 
existence to her had been work ; and now in her sorrow the 
habit remained with her, and brought with it a measure of 
consolation. During those last two years of her life, her achieve- 
ment showed no sign of diminished energy, since, besides finishing 
her husband's two novels and executing the monument for his 



THE 'LONG DIMINUENDO' 383 

grave, as related, she was preparing for a fresh exhibition of 
war-pictures which she intended to have in the spring. 

Some of the last of this series of symbolic paintings had been 
nearly completed in the autumn of 1918. One, entitled 'A 
Scrap of Paper,' shows Civilization, a crowned figure, clad in 
regal purple, sitting amongst the wreckage of temples and fair 
palaces, while at her feet lies the fatal document of her ruin, 
torn in half. Another picture represents 'The Coming of Peace.' 
A figure of serene loveliness, in floating draperies of transparent 
white and encircled by the rainbow of promise, is seen approaching 
over a barren land. The calm beauty of her face is yet full of 
a great sadness, as though reminiscent of past pain ; and before 
her, two gigantic blood-stained hands, emblematic of the terror 
which is vanishing, are sinking, writhing, into the waters in the 
foreground. 

Still penetrated by the horror of the war, increased now by 
a profound loneliness, the mentality of Evelyn De Morgan, as 
reflected in her pictures, showed something of the grim imagina- 
tion of her childhood. ' I feel I must tell you,' wrote Mrs. 
Stillman after visiting her studio, ' what a splendid impression 
your beautiful work made on me, and how heahng in this terrible 
time it is to see your lovely Peace Madonna and others ; one 
would wish to see them always and to live with them . . . but 
several of your later ones frighten me, I confess, and I am not 
sure I feel your exquisite work should be used in that way.' 
For a sharp divergence was noticeable between the work pro- 
duced by Evelyn during this last sad phase and the fair, joyous 
beauty of her earlier manner when each picture which she 
achieved was a crystallized poem, a glory of colour and of radiant 
dreams. Into her loveliest fancies now had crept a note of 
tragedy, a sense of evil which would not be repressed. In only 
one, perhaps, belonging to this period, has an idea of poetic 
symbolism materialized from her brush untouched by any sorrow- 
ful influence — the beautiful httle picture called ' The Moonbeams 
dipping into the sea ' of which she made three copies, none of 
which, however, were finished. 

For the perpetual darkness of that winter of 1918-19 made 
it impossible to complete the work. Grey, sunless skies prevailed 
day after day ; and to many it seemed a time of yet greater 
gloom, physically and mentally, than any that had preceded it. 
None were immune from the Shadow and the stress of the war. 
Prior to the Armistice, while ten kingdoms were locked in the 
final thBOes of a fierce death-struggle, there came from the Con- 
tinent tales of woe and cruelty calculated to unnerve the strongest ; 
and even with the suspension of hostilities the nightmare of 
bloodshed and grief still brooded over a tortured \yorld. The 
dawning of a year of peace and promise brought httle of the 



384 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

anticipated gladness, while the prolongation of wintry weather 
beyond the usual period served further to undermine the endur- 
ance of many who were suffering from the previous strain, or 
whose constitutions had been lowered by insufficient and less 
nourishing food. The absence of sunshine and the penetrating 
cold continued long after spring should have brightened the 
land ; and the coming of April brought no relief. ' I can't get 
on in this darkness,' Evelyn complained, as she waited throughout 
the month with her unfinished work around her — ' if only the 
sunlight would come ! ' Then followed a brief spell of yet more 
intense cold, of snow, of bitter, raking blizzard ; and when it 
passed, on May 2, Evelyn De Morgan lay dead. 

« 4c * 4: * 

When Death comes with tragic suddenness, the little homely 
accessories of daily life take on a new and pitiful aspect. Four 
days before, she had painted from dawn to dusk. The unfinished 
picture stood upon the easel, the paints were as yet wet upon 
the palette : all the paraphernalia lay ready for the continuance 
of the work which would never be continued ; and the very air 
seemed penetrated with the voice, the presence that were gone 
for ever. Dying thus with the blight of Age unknown, she 
had at least been spared one crucial sorrow of existence, when 
the passion for labour outlasts the faculty of achieving it. But 
in the case of a very vivid personality, full of vitality, of strongly 
marked characteristics, it is as impossible to accept its swift 
extinction as it is to connect that Thing of strange and 
marble beauty, lying so still in the mystery of dissolution, with 
the human being we so lately loved — who so lately was full of 
the glad restlessness of mood and motion. It is the quietude of 
Death even more than its unconcern which strikes a chill to the 
mind of the living. 

And before that silence which had fallen, it mattered little 
what name the doctor called the malady that had killed her in 
those four brief days. Medical science has no panacea for a 
broken heart. But to those who loved her there seemed a 
significance in the fact that when, after death, they took from 
her the sapphire ring which her lover had given her, the stone 
was found shattered from end to end. 

A few days later the tragedy of that cruel separation was 
at last erased. She was laid to rest in the grave where her husband 
had preceded her, under the handiwork which had been to her 
the expression of a bitter grief ; and in that moment the sunshine 
which had been obscured by a mist broke forth — the sunshine 
that had come too late. Yet it flooded the world with light, 
so that, in that sudden coming of spring, the air was full of the 
song of birds, the tender green of the young trees stood revealed 



THE 'LONG DIMINUENDO' 385 

in delicate tracery against a blue sky, and yellow butterflies, 
like flecks of gold, were disporting themselves above the grave. 
Spring had come ; and with it a reunion of lovers. ' It is as 
much the end as it ever is,' De Morgan had written in Joseph 
Vance ; ' The long diminuendo had died down to silence, or 
to a pause followed by a new movement that we who are left 
in the silence could not hear.' 

« * « * * 

In the lovely spring-time which followed Evelyn's death, her 
friend Miss Morris wrote sadly : — 

' Her genius may have posthumous recognition with the world — but 
that is all so stupid and cold, and doesn't matter to us who wanted her to 
go on living and working. . . . The news of her death seems still unreal 
to me . . . yet I am sure it was only her courage and fine spirit that kept 
her alive since William went. She was lost without him. . . . 

' The other day I rode to the place where thousands of fritillaries grow — 
(The week before I wanted them for her, but could not get there) — and sat 
down on the way by the beautiful canal. Just opposite was a miracle of 
an apple-tree reflected in the water. It was most wonderful and made 
me think much of her, as it was the sort of lovehness she delighted in 
painting. . . . 

' An old friend wrote, on reading the Westminster Gazette, saying how 
shocked and sorry he was, and recalling the first time he saw her and 
" instantly loved her." She was coming up from the river-meadow here, 
looking so fresh and happy and full of life, . . .' 

' So fresh and happy and full of life ! ' the words sting with 
the bitterness of contrast. Yet looking to-day at the quiet 
grave wherein lie so still the busy hands and vivid brains which 
once wrought all that loveliness in the world of men, one feels 
that those two who sleep there have known the greatest good 
that earth could offer. For it has been claimed that the best 
thing in hfe — and death — is to make the world better than we 
found it ; and the next best is to leave it more beautiful. 

Respecting the work which Evelyn De Morgan left behind 
her, it may be added that she bequeathed all the pictures in 
her studio at her death to be sold by pubUc auction for the 
soldiers who had been blinded during the war ; while the finest 
specimens of her husband's lustre-ware of which she died possessed, 
executed by him during the final closing-down of the factory, 
she left as a gift to the Victoria and Albert Museum. 

Her earlier pictures, of which she kept no record, are dispersed 
about the world ; but the present writer has a fine and repre- 
sentative collection of both pictures and pottery, which will 
eventually be offered to the nation, unless in the interval some 
philanthropist cares to concentrate them in a De Morgan Gallery, 
commemorative of two remarkable hves and of an interesting 
phase in our national art. 

BB 



386 WILLIAM AND EVELYN DE MORGAN 

In regard to the pictures in this collection, Sir Luke Fildes, 
R.A., shortly after Evelyn's death, received the following letter 
from a correspondent who had closely studied her painting : — 

' I was interested in your wishing to know something of 
her methods. There must have been great stretches of labour 
between her dreams and their realization. She did not paint 
her fellow-creatures, but beings of her imagination in the spheres 
of esoteric belief, and she is alone in her consummate method:. 
of expression. She never, so far as I have seen, produced the 
texture of Holbein, but some of her work is as delicate, and 
reaches the perfection of Albert Diirer. Her craftsmanship has 
a stupendous range, and a careful study of her work reveals the 
existence of a thousand secrets that will never be known. She 
painted all day long and nearly every day for more than forty 
years. 

' To me her supreme quality is the purity and brilliance of 
her palette. She seemed to be in possession of a faculty analogous 
to the tuning fork of a musician to which she could always refer 
her problems without losing the exact pitch of a single note. 
She had the imagination of a poet in the languages of form and 
colour with the genius of a great musician in the harmonies of 
vision. 

' The subjects that engrossed her contemplation were Epic, 
yet, revelling in the lyrics of the daisy and violet, she justified 
the imagery of Shakespeare by " painting meadows with dehght." 

' As the possessor of all these wonderful gifts, with the capacity 
for giving them full and manifold expression, she was alone in 
a world that must have seemed sordid when she looked down 
and not worthy of consideration when she looked up. Reward 
she had none and has gone to her rest. 

' Her fame must now wait, as far as I can see, upon the future 
operations of speculative dealers, as happened with Millet, 
Corot, M. Maris, and their fraternity. 

' Some day, perhaps not far distant, when a big " corner " 
has been made, the doubtful Gainsborough and dubious Hals 
will be removed from the galleries of docile millionaires and 
replaced by De Morgans, where they will hang, let us hope, as a 
standing rebuke to the vulgarity of the buyers and their motives 
for buying. . . . 

' Enough, enough, it is a mad and foolish world and a planet 
that was not fit for Evelyn De Morgan to hve in. . , / 




In Memoriam 

Evelyn De Morgan pinxit 

In purple draperies, and holding a wreath of immortelles. 



ANGLO-INDIAN 

ANCESTORS OF 

WILLIAM 

DE MORGAN 



ANGLO-INDIAN ANCES ) 

OF 

WILLIAM DE MORG j 



John De Morgan had a 
Brother, Lieut. Wdliam De 
Morgan. D. 1747 



Lieut. John De Morgan, Gazetted £« 
East India Company 1715. B. 1694J 
Piiblicat 1 Dec. 1760 



(1) Elizabeth 
B. Nov. 1734 



(2) Susanna 
B. Nov. 1735 



(3) Mary 
B. Dec. 1736 

(1) Elizabeth married John Des Voeux at Negapatam, died two months after marriage. No Issu» 
2ndly, 12 Aug. 1750, James Wilson. Died 1761 without Issue. 
Srdly, II June, 1762, John Calland, and had Issue 



(4) Edward 
B. Dec. I73J 



i. John 

B. 24 Nov. 1763 



3. Elizabeth 
B. 9 Nov. 1766 
D. 12 Jan. 1768 

(2) Susanna married Colonel Charles Campbell 15 July, 1750, and had Issue 



2. Elizabeth 
B. 10 Dec. 1764 
D. 3 Dec. 1765 



4. Sarah 

B. 30 May, 1768 

M. — Hawkins 



1. Donald 2. Lawrence 3. Isabella 

B. 4 June, 1751 B. 27 Aug. 1753 B. 24 Oct. 1754 

g) Mary married first Thomas Taylor 29 July, 1750, and had Issue 
. 9 Jan. 1800 



1 I \ 

4. Archibald 5. Charlotte 6. Amelia 

B. II Nov. 1755 B. 30 Nov. 1758 B. 28 Dec. i 

2ndly Robert Turing and had Issue 
D. 24 Dec. 1764 I 



1. John 
B. 4 May, 1751 



2. Mary 1. Mary 

B. 7 Feb. 1753 B. 5 April i757 

(4) Edward died young 

(5) Ann married first Captain John Innes 24 Nov. 1753, and had Issue sndly James West 21 April, 1761, and had 



1. Ann 

B. 6 Oct. 1755 



2. John 

B. 21 Mar. 1757 



I 

3. George 

B. 15 Oct. 1758 



4. James 

B. 9 Jan. 1760 



i 



1. Sarah 2. James 3. Mary 4. Charles 5. Died young 6. Ann 7. Tho>:as 

B. 13 May, 1762 B. i May, 1764 B. 22 June, 1765 B. 22 June, 1766 B. 17 Dec. 1767 B. 30 Dec. 1768 B. 15 July, i 

Mr. Parry Bannerman 

(6) Augustus married Christiana Huttemann, daughter of the Rev. Coniade Huttemann, 31 July, 1769, and bad Issue 
D. II Oct. 1778. Killed at the Siege of Pondicherry upon the I 

Sap Batteiy while he was laying a gun against the Fort "-- 



(7) Jane married J. R. Richard Maitland 2 Feb. 1761, and had Issue 
Died 1764 I 



1. Catherine 
B. 10 April, 1762 
[See (3) No. i] i. John Taylor 
2. — Roebuck 

(8) Charles. Died young 

(9) Gbosob. Died young 



2. Sophia 

B. 3 May, 1763 



3. Richard 
B. 8 Sept. 1764 



Colonel John De Morgan, East '. 
pany. B. Oct. 1772. D. Nov. if 



{i 



John 2. James 

Lost on voyage home from India 
in the Prinu of Wales, c. 1804 



3. Eliza 

B. 27 Sept. 1801 

Lewis Hensley 

1. Eliza. Jan. B. 1831 

2. Emilv Martha. B. 1833 

3. Augustus De M. B. 183 

4. Harriet Georgiana. B. ) 



1. Eluabeth Alice 
B. 4 June, 1838 
D. Xmas. 1853 



• The asterisks denote the dhiect descent. 



^ I 

2. William FREND=Mary Evelj-n Pickering 

B. 16 Nov. 1839 D. 2 May, 1919 

M. Mar. 1887 

D. 16 Jan. 1917 



3. George Campbell 
B. 16 Oct. 1841 
D. 1867 



Sarah de Pommar6, daughter of Peter 
de Pommare. M. Sept. i7i7. D. 1720. 



ei739 



Ann Turberville or Turville (Second 
wife). D. Negapatam 1707 



m 

(6) Augustus 
B. Nov. 1740 



(7) Jane 

B. July, 1743 



(8) Charles 
B. Dec. 1745 



(9) Georgb 
B. Oct. 1746 



6. George 

B. 23 April, 1772 



7. Augustus 
B. 28 April, 1773 



.rles 
1762 



8. George 9. Died young 10. Sophia 11. Harriet Francbs 

B. 25 Jan. 1763 B. 1764 B. 24 May, 1767 B. 4 Jan. 1769 



2. Helen 

B. 14 Oct. 1738 



3. Robert 

B. 17 April, i7<5o 



jabeth 9. William 

LUg. 1774 B. 20 Aug. 1775 
n. Stevenson 
racklin 



10. Richard 
B. 21 Aug. 1776 



11. Harriet 
B. 15 Sept. 1778 



12. Charlotte 
B. 4 Aug. 1779 
Col. Walker 



13. Frances 
B. 1781 
Died young 



14. Montagu 
B. 5 April, 1782 



ORGE Augustus 

une 1770 

i in Idadras Cavalry) 



* I 

2. John 

B. 5 Oct. 1772 



3. Edward 
B. 19 Aug. I77S 



2ndly Duncan Buchanan 17 Apr. 1767, and had Issue 



1. John 

B. 13 Sept. 1768 



2. Elizabeth 
B. 5 Jan. 1770 



3. James 

B. 22 Sept. 1772 



4. Janet Helen 
B. II Nov. 1774 



Elizabeth, daughter of John Dodson, of 

Custom House, London. 

Married at Colombo, Ceylon, 1798. D. 1856. 



4. Georgiana 
Died young 



TI 



5. Augustus = Sophia Elizabeth Frend 



B. 27 June, 
1806 
D. 1871 



M. 1837 
D. 1892 



6. George 
B. 18 July, 1808 
D. 1890 



7. Campbell Greio 
B. 22 Nov. i8ii 
D. 1876 
Kate Hudson 

1. Walter Campbell 

2. John 



Edward Lindsey =Ada Stratford- Wright 
June, 1843 I 

1872 

1880 I 

Had Issu* 



5. Anne IsABELLA=Dr. Thompson 6. Helena Christiana 7. Mary Augusta 
B 1845 I D. unmarried D. unmarried 

m'. 1874 1870 1907 

D. 1904 I 

Had Issut , , ^ , . 

The asterisks denote the dirkct descent. • 



INDEX 



Abingdon, 122 

Absalom, Professor, 273, 329 

Academy, The Royal, 9, 79. 189, 192 ; 

President of, 179 
Academy, The (magazine), 323 
Academy Schools, 51, 57, 58 
Achilles, 225 
Acton, 43 

Adam and Eve, Story about, 140, 145 
Addison Road, 228 
Adelaide Road, 52, 61 
Ady, Mrs. (Julia Cartwright), 245, 

264, 362, 363 
Affair of Dishonour, An, 331 et scq., 

348, 349 
Aitken, Miss, iii, 112 
Aix les Bains, 302 
Albert, The (a boat), 121 
Alchemist's Daughter, The (picture by 

W. De Morgan), 84 
Aldwincle All Saints, 137 footnote 
Alice-for-Short, 237, 261, 263, 266, 267. 
269,276, 281, also footnote ; 282, 
283, 290, 299. 300, 301, 304 
et seq. 
Allingham, Mrs., 13 
America, 60, 243, 247, 279, 305 ; 

verse from, 320, 326 
Amor Amoris, 327 
Anagrams, 65 
Ancaster, Lady, 269, 309 
Andalusia, 306 
Andersen, Hans, 248, 309 
Anderson's " British Poets," 342 
Andover, The Viscountess, 143 
Angel of Death, The (picture by E. 

De Morgan), 174 
Angel, The Leper, 356 
\ngler. The Complete, 123 
Uigela, see Mackail 



Angelus, 337, 338 

Annunciation, The (picture by B. 

Bume-Jones), 74 
Anson, The Viscountess, 143 
Antenor, The Hall of, 211 
Anti-Logarithm's Cannon, 23 
Antinous, The Young, 146 
Appassionata, The Sonata, 328 
Appleton's, 245 
Arab Hall, 204 
Archbishop of York (Lancelot Black- 

burne), 29, also footnote; 298 
Ariadne, 70 

Ariadne in Naxos (picture by E. De 
Morgan), 190 

Ark, The, 120 
Log of, 120-122 

Arkroyd, Judith, 321, 322 

Amo, The, 83, 191, 209, 254, 360 

Art Workers* Guild, 379 

Arts and Crafts, 205 

Ashbee, Mr., g6 footnote 

Ashburnham, Lord, 129 

Asia Minor, Pottery from, 228 

Assisi, 186 

Athenesum, The, 74, 109, 254 

Auerbach, 253 

Aurora Triumphans (picture by E. 
De Morgan), 192 

Austin, Alfred, 199 

Author, The, 339 

Authors' Clipping Co., 367 

Authors' Society, The, 339 

Avalon, 230 



Bablockhithe, 124 
Bacchus, 70, 224 
Bagehot, Mrs. Walter, 194 
Baldwin, Mr. Alfred Stanley-, 294 



391 



BB" 



592 



INDEX 



Bale, Mr., Narrative of, 91-94, 127, 130 

Balham, 301 

Balzac, 381 

Barbauld, Mrs., 30 

Barnard, Bishop & Barnard, Messrs., 

86 
Bate, Percy, 189, 201 footnote 
Bath, Sojourn at, 205 
Battersca, 82 

Crucible works, 90 

Park, 107 
" Bawp," A, 63 
Bcatt}', Mrs., 240 and footnote 
Beddgelert, 61 
Bedford, Duke of, 221, 224 
Beethoven, 89, 328 
Bellosquardo, 363 
Belshazzar's Feast, 70 
Beppino, 235 
Berlin, 192 

Bettws-y-coed, 61, 63 
Bewick's " Birds," 41 
" Bible John," 24 

Bicycle, invention for, 244 footnote 
Birmingham, 192 
Black Bag, The. 298 
Blackbume, Archbishop of York, 29, 
also footnote ; 298 

Archdeacon, 28 

The Rev. Francis, 28 

Sarah, 29, 42 
Blake, William, 30 
Bhnd Jim, 313 et seq. 
Blockley, 126, 127 

Blunt, Reginald, 13, 86, 87, also foot- 
note ; 91. 215, 225 

Correspondence with, 216-220, 223, 
225, 379 
Boer War, The, 223 
Bookman, The, 259 ; quotation from, 

267, also Jcotnote 
Boreas, 311 
Bossom, Mr., 123 
Boulogne, 303 
Boyce, G. P., 82 
Bradgate, Lionel, 14 
Brancalone, The Marchese, 95 
Brickdale, Eleanor Fortescue, 104, 242 
Brignall, 28 
Brittany, 21 
Brookwood, 376 
Brougham, luord, 30 



Browne, Sir James Crichton-, 286 

Browning, Robert, 30, 328, 329, 360 

Brownings, The, 201 

Bruton Street, Exhibition, 248 

Bryanston Square (No. 48), 187, 194 

Budget of Paradoxes, 32 

Burdett, Sir Francis, 30 

Burgess (a maid), 179 

Burial of Sir David IVilkic, The, 348 

Burke, 339 

Burlington, Earl of, 142 

Burlington (magazine), 100 footnote, 207 
footnote 

Burne- Jones, (Sir) Eward, 65 ; car- 
toons by, 66-70, 71 ; signature 
of, 72 ; 73, 74, y^ ; grandchildren 
of, 105; 115, 116, 130, 131, 143, 
188: the art of, 191 ; 192, 193, 
194, 202, 209-211, death of, 
230 ; memorials of, 231-2, 
245, 300 footnote 
Lady (also Mrs.), 71, 103, 202, 231-2 ; 
236, 239, 240, 265, 275, 276, 294. 

374 
Margaret, 75, 84, 120, 122-5, 194. 

See also Mrs. Mackail. 
Philip, 84, 275, also footnote, Sir 
PhiUp 
Buss, Miss, 51 

Byron, Lady Noel, 2g footnote, 31, 46 
By the Waters of Babylon, 201, also 
footnote 



Cairo, 204, 205, 241, 253, 275 

Cambridge, 26, 140 

Camden Street, Home in, 51, 52, 336, 

337. 355 
Camelot, 65 

Campbell, William (the poet), 30 
Campbell- Bannerman, 302 
Cantagalli, 129, 20S. 219, 224, also 

footnote ; 225 
Cannon Jim, 258, 265 footnote 
Cannons Ashby, 137 footnote 
Capstick, Mr., 52 
Captives, The (picture by E. De 

Morgan), 357 
Cardigan, Lord, 149 



INDEX 



393 



Carlisle, Lord (George Howard), 246 
Carlyle, Thomas, 9, 82, 111-113 
Carocci, 95 
Carpenter, Mrs. E., 14 

Dr., 109 
Cartoons, Game of, 62 , 66—70 
Cary, Francis Stephen, 51, 52 

The Rev. H. F., 52. 66 
Cassandra (picture by E. De Morgan), 

192 footnote 
Catlin, 50, 253, 331 
Caversham, 121 
Cecil, 137 
Celtic names, 21 
Cerberus, 67, 70, 204, 327 
Chaffers, 227 
Challis, 232 et seq. 
Chappel and Pole, 265 
Charles I, 137 
Cheiron, 225 

Chelsea, 82, 83, 96, 114, 127, 129, 195, 
199, 200, 223, 228, 240, 320, 
330. 337. 362, 376. 379. 380 

Bridge, 82 

Embankment, 340 

Infirmary, 363 

Old Church, 82, 99, 375, 379-382 
Cheyne Row, 81, 82, 98, 108, 227, 254, 

363 
Walk, 254 
Choice of Chance, A, 105 
Christie and Manson, 340 
Christmas (1873), 84 ; (1897), 217 ; 

(1910), 340 : (1916), 371 
Church Street, Chelsea, 127, 337, 365, 

379. 380 
Churchill, Winston, 255 
City of Light, The (picture by E. De 

Morgan), 192 footnote 
Clifton Loch, 21 
Clouds, 252, also footnote 
Coelebs, 141 
Coke of Norfolk, 142 ; daughters of, 

143 

Coke, Thomas, ist Earl of Leicester, 

142 
Coleridge, Samuel, 30 
Collier, The Hon. John, 180 
Colombo, 23 
Columbus, 50, 210 
Coming of Peace, The (picture by E. 

De ilorgan), 383 



Cook, Sir Theodore, 302 

Coombe, 341 

Cooper, Fenimore, 50, 331 

Cophetua, King, 73 

Copperfield, David, 254, 256, 268, 272 

Corot, 386 

Cosens, Samuel, 147 

Cotswolds, The, 126 

Coupland, Jim, 323 et seq. 

Coventry, 126 

Crane, Walter, 105 

Crippen Murder, The, 338-9 

Crown of Glory, The (picture by E. De 

Morgan), iqz footnote 
Cruikshank, R., 269 



Damascus, 204 
Dante. 83 

Translator of, 66 
Daughters of the Mist, The (picture by 

E. De Morgan), 311 
Dave and Dolly, 269, 343 
Davidson, Mr., 61 

Miss, 61 
Dawn, The (picture by E. De Morgan), 

201 footnote 
Dead Man's Canyon, 303 
Debenham, Mr., 228 
Defoe, 29 

Street. 29 
Delia Robbia ware, 91 
Demoivre, 21, 25 
De Morgan, Origin of, 21 
Family Chronologically— 

John, great-great-grandfather of 

W. De Morgan, 21, 22 
Augustus (Captain), son of above, 

21 ; death of, 23 
Christina, or Christiana (Hutte- 

mann), vnie of Augustus, 23 
George Augustus (son of Augustus 

and Christina), 23 
John, Colonel, ditto, grandfather 
of W. De Morgan, life in India, 
24 ; death, 24 ; spirit of, 35-36 
Elizabeth, wife of John De Mor- 
gan {nde Dodson), 23, 24, 25, 

20 



394 



INDEX 



Augustus (son of John and Eliza- 
beth), Professor, and celebrated 
mathematician, birth, 24 ; ex- 
hibits mathematical talent, 25 ; 
makes acquaintance of William 
Frend, 29 ; becomes Professor 
of Mathematics at London Uni- 
versity, 27 ; marriage, 30-31 ; 
humour of, 32, 33, 329 ; meet- 
ing with Dickens, 34 ; investi- 
gates Spiritualism, 34, 35, 36, 
also footnote, 37 ; religious 
views, 37, 81 ; letter from, 57 ; 
resigns Professorship, 79, 80 ; 
death of, 81 ; further references 
to, 51, 53, 56, 6i, 65, 109, no, 
259. 336 

Sophia, wife of Professor (Augus- 
tus) De Morgan (nde Frend), 
mother of W. De Morgan, girl- 
hood, 30, 31 ; marriage, 31 ; 
settles in Gower Street, 32 ; 
philanthropic schemes, 32 ; 
writes From Matter to Spirit 
35 ; Nursery Journal of, 38-50 ; 
visits Burne-Jones, 73 ; writes 
Memoir of her husband, 109 ; 
death of, 205-6 ; Reminiscences 
of, 206 

Eliza (sister of Prof. De Morgan), 
336 

Elizabeth Alice (eld. dau. of 
Prof. De Morgan), 38 et seq. ; 
death of, 48, 80, 337 

William Frend (eld. son of Prof. 
De Morgan), Sir W. Richmond's 
description of, 9-1 1 ; ancestry 
and parentage, 21-37 ; early 
years, 38-50 ; visits Fordhook, 
43 ; youth, 51-81 ; Gary's 
School, 52 ; stays at Lynton, 
55 ; at University College, 56 ; 
at the Academy Schools, 57 ; 
called " the Mouse," 59, 103 ; 
personal appearance, 60 ; visits 
Betts-y-coed, 61-6 ; hears 
Waldstein Sonata, 6i ; plays 
•'Game of Cartoons," 62, 66- 
70 ; friendship with Burne- 
Jones, Rossetti, Spencer- Stan- 
hope, etc., 70 ; lives in f^itzroy 
Square, 73-4 ; making stained 



glass, 77 ; tiles, 78-9 ; death of 
his father and sister, 80-1 ; 
moves to Cheyne Row and 
starts making pottery, 81 ; 
Chelsea Period, 82-101 ; stained 
glass for Stanley Park, 83 ; 
Christmas at the Grange, 84 ; 
takes Orange House, 85 ; ex- 
periments in lustre, 88, 95, 96, 
2i6, 219 ; in Mosaic work, 93 ; 
Merton Abbey Period, 102-30 ; 
anecdotes of, 102-5 1 contro- 
versy with Dr. Carpenter, 109 ; 
with Herbert Spencer, 1 09-11 ; 
with Thomas Carlyle, ill ; at 
Sands End, Fulham, 129 ; en- 
gagement, 1 30-1 ; marriage, 
194-5 ; settles in The Vale, 
196, 199, 200, 201 ; death of 
mother, 205-6 ; ordered abroad, 
205-6 ; life in Florence, 206- 
29 ; decorates ships' panels, 
211-13 '> financial difficulties, 
215 et seq. ; closes factory, 226. 
Writes Joseph Vance, 233 ; 
publication of, 245 ; method of 
writing, 261-72, 279-83 ; ap- 
praisement of Dickens, 283-6; 
writes Alice-for-Short, 261, 263, 
264, 265, 276, 278 ; pubUcation 
of, 279 ; writes Somehow Good, 
286 et seq. ; controversy with 
Roman Catholics, 290-4 ; views 
on a future life, 272-5, 295 ; 
correspondence, 294-307 ; buys 
engagement ring, 309 ; writes 
It Never Can Happen Again 
315, 320; publication of, 320, 
325 ; sits for portrait, 317 ; 
" house-cooling " at The Vale, 
318-19 ; appreciation of various 
authors, 325-8 ; writes An 
Affair of Dishonour, 331-3 ; 
publication of, 333-4 ; views 
on Female Suffrage, 334-5 ; 
settles in Church Street, 337 ; 
speech at Authors' Society. 
339 ; writes A Likely Story, 
340, 341 ; meets Mr. L. J. 
Vance and Prof. Phelps, 342 ; 
writes When Ghost meets Ghost, 
343-5 ; publication of, 345-7 ; 



INDEX 



395 



leaves Florence, 350 ; views on 
Spiritualism, 352-8 ; old age, 
359-76 ; outbreak of war, 359 '. 
two last novels, 361 ; writes 
verses, 118, 364, 365, 366, 367 ; 
experiments and inventions, 
370-1 ; death, 372 ; obituary, 
374-5 ; funeral, 375-6 ; me- 
morial to, 379-82 
Evelyn, see also Pickering, ii, 12, 
131 ; birth and early life, 135 ; 
christening, 141 ; education, 
144 ; stories of childhood, 145- 
51 ; painting in nursery, 151-2 ; 
early writings, 153-72 ; mania 
for painting, 173 *. 2°^^ *° 
Slade Schools, 177 ; takes prizes 
and scholarship, 180 ; stories 
told by, 181-5 ; goes to Rome, 
185 ; sculpture, 186; exhibits in 
Grosvenor Gallery, 190 ; ditto. 
New Gallery, 192 ; association 
with Spencer-Stanhope. 191 l 
sends to various Exhibitions, 
192 ; paints The Thorny 
Way, 192-3 ; meets W. De 
Morgan, 194 ; wedding, 195. 
196 ; paints Love's Passing, 
201 ; finds letter at Sidmouth, 
202-3 ; finances pottery, 204, 
224 footnote, 225, 231 ; finds 
Joseph Vance. 233; 142. I93. 

•/22, 223, 23«, 242, 245, 248, 

249. 313. 317. 339, 259-60; 
as " The Real Janey," 308-12 ; 
letter to Mrs. Morris, 315 ; 317. 
319, 350. 353. 354. 355. 356. 
357. 369, 371. 372, 373. 374. 
377 ; finishes two novels, 378- 
9 ; sculptures gravestone, 382 ; 
last pictures, 383 ; death, 384- 
5 ; bequest to Victoria and 
Albert Museum, 385 ; apprecia- 
tion of painting, 386 

George Campbell, 2nd son of 
Prof. De Morgan, 38, 48, 61, 80 

Edward, 38, 61 

Annie, 61, 62 ; marriage to Dr. 
Thompson, 86 ; death of, 128 

Chrissy (Christina), 61, 62, 81 

Mary, 61, 62, 81, 105, 106, 230, 
241, 242, 250, 270, 275, 295 



Walter, 13, 369, 370 
Richard, 13 
Demoivre, 21, 25 
De Morgan Road, 214, 215 
Demosthenes, 21 

Derby, Countess of (Miss Farren), 14X 
Dickens, Charles, interview with, 10, 
51, 67, 125, 246, 261, 268, 269, 
270, 271, 272, 273. 329, 378, 381 
Society, The, 271 
Dilke, Sir Charles, 114 
Disraeli, Benjamin, 115, 116 
Doccia, 95 

Dodson, Elizabeth, see Elizabeth De 
Morgan 
James, 23, 25 
John, 23 

William, nom de plume, I06 
Donaldson, Andrew, 9 
Doulton, Sir Henry, 306-7 
Dowdeswell, Miss Seraphina, 235 
Downing Professor, The, 300 
Dowson, Mrs. Maisie, 13, 236, 237, 238, 
245, 295. See also Woolner, 
Mrs. Hugh 
Drew, Mrs., 247, 302 
Dring, 213 
Dryad, A (picture by E. De Morgan), 

192 footnote 
Dry den, John (the poet), 137, also 

footnote 
Dunn, Professor, 307 
Dunwich, 334 
Duomo, The, 276, 293 
Durer, Albert, 386 
Dyer, George, 30 



B 

East India Co., 22 , 

Edict of Nantes, 21 

Egypt, 242, 275, 295 

Egyptian Government, The, 205 ' 

Egyptian potters, 306 

Eldridge, Mrs., 323, 324, 348 

Elgood, Mrs., 275 

Elizabeth, Queen, 136. I37 

Elhs, Mr. Stewart, 13, 333. 334. 343. 

370 
Empoli, 186 
Epsom, 127 



396 



INDEX 



Eton, 123, 140 

Eustace John, 200 ; 316, 318, Narra- 
tive of, 375 
Evans, Dr. (Sebastian), 232 
Evelyn, the diarist, 330 
Ewbank, 213, 217, 219, 224, 227 



Fanshawe, Colonel, 24 

Farady, Professor, 35 

Farish, The Professor's son, 21 

Farren, Miss, see Derby, Countess of, 

141 
Faulkner, Charles, 71, yj, 84, 125 
Fawkes, Guy, 45, 137 
Fenwick (Gerry), 286, 287, 288 
Fictionary, The, 126, 127, 226 
Fielding, Henry, 43, 381 
Fiesole, 212 
Fildes, Sir Luke, 386 
Fine Art Society, The, 192 
Firth, the historian, 114, 115 
Fitzroy, Admiral, 104 

Square, 78, 79, 86, 205, 265, 343 
Fleming, Mrs. Ahce (see also Kipling), 
84 ; verses by, 84-5, 193, 299- 
300. 350-1 
Flora (picture by E. De Morgan), 192 
Florence, 68, 83, 95, 206-7, 125, 191, 
206, 207, 208, 209, 213, 215, 
223, 226, 231, 236, 242, 255, 
300, 331, 340. 341, 350, 351, 
352, 353. 360, 363 
Flower, Mrs. Wickham, 85 
Foley, Lord, 148 
Fordhook, 43, 45, 47, 206, 247. 264, 

343 
Fort Ajengo, 21 
David, 21 
St. George, 21 
Fortnightly, The, 333 
Frampton, Sir George, 382 
French, Sir John, 360 

Mrs. Underwood, 337 
Frend, George, 27, 28 

Sophia, see Sophia De Morgan 
William, 27, 28, 29, 30 
From Matter to Spirit, 35 footnote, 

36. 352, 353 
Fry, Elizabeth, 32 



Gainsborough, 143, 386 

Gamp, Mrs., 125, 196 

Garden of ppportunity, The (pictnre by 

E. De Morgan), 310 
Gaskell, Mr. Milnes, 141 
Genoa, 221 
Ginori Factory, 95 
Gladstone, The Right Hon. W. E., 140, 

247 
Glasgow, Mayo-, Mrs. Sarah, 347 
Glazebrook, Ethel (Mrs. Edward 
Smith), 13 
Hugh de T., 13 
Glenconner, Lady, 13, 252 ; (Tennant), 

295, 296, 328 
Gloria in Excelsis (picture by E. Da 

Morgan), 192 footnote 
Gosse, Edmund, 381, 382 
Gower Street, 51, 56, 178, 185 
Grange, The, 73, 74, 84, 25a 
Graphic, The, 339 
Graubosch, 323 

Graves, Mr., author of Father O'Flynn 
65 
Father of (Bishop of Limerick), 65 
John, Uncle oi, 65 
Great Marlborough Street, 129, 195, 

216, 223, 265 
Green Street, 141 

Grosvenor Gallery, 186, 187, 189, 190, 
The Hon. Richard, 120, 121 (R.C.G.) 
Square, 175 
Gubbio, 95 

Gunn, Peter, 257, 346 
Gwen Lady. 343, 346 et seq. 



H 

Haileybury, 337 

Hall Caine, 316 

Hals, 386 

Hambledon Lock, 121 

Hamilton, Sir William, 32 

Hammersmith, 119, 120. -26^ footnote 

Hammond, Henry Dennis. 325 

Harding, J. D., 143 

Hardy, Thomas, 381 

Harris, Mrs. (dispute about), 125 

Hayden, Mrs. (American medium), 35 

Heard, Sir Isaac, 135 



INDEX 



397 



Heath, Charles, 261, 263, 264, 265, 
278, 301, 336 

Heinemann, William, 13, 237, 240, 
243, 247, 254, 255, 256, 257, 
271, 276, 280, 288, 296, 299, 
302, 313, 314, 315, 316, 317, 
318, 321, 322. 343, 344-6, 378 

Helen of Troy (picture by E. De Mor- 
gan), 310 

Henley, 121 

Henry Vin, 136, 156 

Hensley, The Rev. A. D© Morgan, 13, 

336-7 
Herschel, Sir John, 21, 32, 80 
Hertford, Miss Laura, 79, 106, 266 
Hewlett, Maurice, 373 
Hocking, Silas K., 250 
Hodder & Stoughton, Messrs., 237 
Hohenzollem, The insolent, 366 
Hohday, Henry, 9, 61, 62, 63, 65, 66, 

104, 242, also footnote ; 249, 

351-2 
Mrs., 103, 129, 238, 241, 249, 338, 

365 
Miss (Winifred), 105, 249, 323, 338, 

365 
Holkham, 143 
Holman Hunt, 187 
Holmes, Mr. (phrenological lecturer), 

31 
Holt, Henry, 245 
Horsey, Miss de, 149 
Huguenot refugees, 21, 127 
Huttemann, The Rev. Conrade, 22 
Huxley, Mary, 182 
Hyndman, u6 



" Janey " in Joseph Vance, 235, 236, 
254i 257, 259, 265 footnote, 
308, 329 
Mrs. Morris, 71 
The De Morgan's nurse, 41, 45, 152, 

265 footnote 
The real, 308-312 
Jerrythought, Mr., 265 
Joan, 345 
Johnson, Dr., 216 
Jones, see Burne-Jonea 
Jowett, Dr., 339 
Juha, the barmaid, 343 
Juster, Joe, 86 



K 

Kelmscott House, 119, 127, 128, 265 

Manor, 118, 120 
Kelsall, Walter, 13 
Kensington High Street, 355 
Kentucky, 346 
Kew, 120 

Keyes, Robert, 137 

Kingdom of Heaven suffer eth Violence, 
The (picture by E. De Morgan), 
356 
Kingsley, Henry, 271 

Mary (Lucas Malet), 180 
Kiphng, AUce, 84. See Fleming 

John Lockwood-, 251, 252 

Rudyard, 84 
Kipps Manor, 331-2, 334 
Knight, Mr., publisher, 34 



lies, Frank, 93, 213, 217, 227 

[mrie, Mr., 192, also footnote 

It Never Can Happen Again, 63, 293 ; 
writing of, 315, 316, 319 ; pub- 
lication of, 320 ; synopsis of, 
321-3 ; criticism of, 324-5 

Izzy, Aunt, 252, 253, 255, 269 



Jackey (Eustace John), 54 

Jacox, 52, 53 

Jane (Hales), 152, 182 



Laidlaw, WilUe, 251 
Lamb, Charles, 282 
Landseer, 98 
Lansbury, Mr., 335 
Larkins, Miss, 340 

A ship, 24 
Lawrence & BuUen, 237 

W., 239, 240, 241, 281, 340 
Layard, Henry Austen, 66 
Lee, Stirhng-, W., 318 
Leighton House, 204 

Lord, 204 
Le Queux, 250 
Levant©, 221 



398 



INDEX 



Life and Thought emerging from the 
Tomb (picture by E. De Mor- 
gan), 192 

Likely Story, A, 340, 34I 

Lindsey, Sir Coutts, 189 

Livadia, the Czar's Yacht, 205, 211, 
213, 301 

Lizerann, 323 et seq., 362, 373 

Lloyd George, 335 

Lomax. Mrs., 121 

Lossie, 235, 248, 249, 255, 257, 259, 
303. 304. 308, 329. 375 

Lovelace, Mary, Countess of {nit 
Stuart Wortley), 13, i8o 
Ralph, 2nd Earl of, 46, 55, 180, 247, 
248, 320 

Love's Passing (picture by E. De 
Morgan), 201 

Love's Piping (picture by E. De Mor- 
gan), 350 ; verses on, 351 

Lucas, Horatio, 78 ; Mrs., 13 

Lu cilia, 141 

Lucinda, 331, 332 

Lustre ware. History of, 95, also foot- 
note ; remarks upon, 79, 94, 95, 
96, 129, 2i6, 217, 219 

Lynmouth, 55 

L>Titon, 55 

Lytton, Sir Bulwer, 46 
Lady, 46 

M 

MacAdam, 316 
Macdonald, Dr. George, 119 

Miss Georgina, see Lady Burne- Jones 
Mackail, Angela, 105, 242 
Clare, 105 
Dennis, 105 

John C. 13, 113, 114. 115. 119. 226, 
230, 231, 235, 236, 241, 242, 
234. 255. 256, 327. 328, 339, 382 
Margaret, 13,241, 255, 275, 368, 369. 
See also Margaret Burne- Jones 
(Margot) 
Macleod, Miss, 121 
Madeira, 24 
Madeline, 340 
Madonna, Peace, 383 

di San Sisto, 88 
Madox-Brown, Ford, 187 
Madras, 24 



Madura, 24 
Majolica, 217 
Majorca, 208 
Mammon, 312 

Mammon, The Worship of (picture by I 
E. De Morgan), 312 ^ 

Marianne, 321, 324 et seq. 
Mariar, Aunt, 343 
Marillier, H., 297, also footnote ; 307 
Maris, M., 386 
Marks on Pottery, 229 
Marling, Sir Samuel, 83 
Marshall, yj 

Martineau, The Rev. James, 79 
Marx, Karl, 116 

Massier, Clement, potter, 95, 129 
Maurier, du, 236, 254 
Maw's Pottery, 104 
Mayo. Mrs. Emily, 347 
Medusa, Bust of, 185-6 
Memorials of E. Burne- Jones, 231-2 
Mercedes Villa, 209 
" Alercy and Truth," etc. (picture by 

E. De Morgan), 353 
Meredith, George, 381 
Mermaids, The Five (picture by E. De 

Morgan), 248 
Merton Abbey, 86, 96, 125, 126, 127, 
128, 129, 223, 227 
Period, The, 102-31 
Mesmerism, 108, 109 

Michelangelo, 264 

Mill, John Stuart, 32 

Minister's wife. Letter from, 304 

Minnesota, 253 

Minorca, 208 

Minton tiles, 90, 103 

Mo', Uncle, 343, 346 

Molesey Lock, 120 

Moncrieff, W. Scott-, 13, 327, 359, 360, 
361 

Montana, 303 

Moonbeams dipping into the Sea, The 
(picture by E. De Morgan), 383 

Moore, Albert, 9, yy 

Moores, Charles, 289 

More, Mrs. Hannah, 141 

More, Sir Thomas, 382 

Morris, Miss May, 13, 77, 82, 98 ; 
quotation from, 98-100 ; 122, 123, 
124, 125, 192, 205, 208-9, 352, 
376-7, 380, 381. 385 



INDEX 



399 



Jenny, 221 

Mrs., 71, 84, 220. 249, 315, 352 
WUliam, 74-8, 87, 90. 93. 111-14. 
116-19 ; Purchases Kelmscott 
House, 119 ; Ditto Kelmscott 
Manor, 118 ; Verses to, 118 ; 
Journey in Ark, 120 et seq., 210, 
226 ; Death of, 230 ; Biography 
of, 230-1, 253. 265, 269. 376 ; 
Firm of, 77. 78, 104,222 

Mosaic work, 93-4 

Moscheles, FeUx, 369 and footnote 

Mould, Mrs., 196 

Mudie, Mr., 49 

Mudie's Library. 49 

Mulock, Miss D. M. (Mrs. Craik). 67, 
also footnote ; 70 

Mundella, The Rt. Hon. John, 190 



Kecklace of Princess Fiorimonde, The, 

105 
Nelson, 127 
Neptune, 225 
Nesbit, E., 270 
Nettleship, The oculist, 103 
New Gallery, The, 192 
Newton, Sir Isaac, 293 
Nolan, Father, 291, 293 
Norman, Philip, 180 
Normandy, 21 
North, Roger, 138 
Nursery Journal, A, 38 etseq., 98 
Nuti, Villa, 191, 209, 225, 294, 363 



Old Mad House, The. 361, 372, 378 
Old Man's Youth. The, Chapter III, 
55. 318' ^50 footnote, 361, 378-9 
Oliver, Professor, 318 
OUivant, Alfred, 326 
On a Pincushion, 93, 105 
'Opkins, 55 
Orange House, 85, 87, 125, 227, 363, 

379 
"Orator Prig," 117 
Orchardson, Sir William, 205 
Oregon, 253 



Owd Boh, 326 et scq. 
Oxford, 122, 123, 125, 136 



Painter of Dreams, A. 363 
Pan, The god, 225 
Passenger, Charles, 86 

Fred, 86, 213, 221, 226, 227 
Paulton Square, 196, I99 
Pawling, Mr., 13, 351 
Pellew, The Hon. Percy, 343. 344« «^*^ 

footnote 
P. & O. directors, 211 
ships, 211, 212, 213 
Penny, Mrs., 21 
Penny Encyclopcedia, 290, 293 
Pepys, Samuel, 330 
Perugia, 186 

Phelps, Professor Lyon, 13, 247, also 
footnote ; 261, 269, 317. 3i8, 323, 
325, 326, 329, 330, 331. 342. 
349. 350. 360, 367. 379 
Philadelphia. Lady from, 324 
Phillott, Miss Constance, 29 footnote 
Piccolpasso, 95 
Pickering, Name of, 266 
Family Chronologically^ 
Sir James, 136 
John, B.D., Prior of Dominicans, 

136 Dr., 136 
Sir WiUiam, Ambassador to 

France, 136 
Sir Gilbert, of Tichmarsh, 137 
Sir Gilbert, Bart., Parliamentarian, 

137 
Lady, his wife, 138 
John, his brother, of Gray's Inn, 

137 

Betty, Mi^ress, his daughter 
(Mrs. John Creede of Oundle), 

138 
The Rev. Henry, footnote, 137 
Ma.Ty, footnote, 137 
Edward Lake, 138, 
Mrs. (Mary Umfreville), 138, 

139, no 
Edward Rowland. 139 

Mrs. (Mary Vere). 139 
Percival Andrea (son of above), 
135. 140. 141. 147 



400 



INDEX 



Mrs. (Anna Maria S. Stanhope), 
135 ; marriage of, 141 ; ances- 
try of. 142-3 ; 144. 145, 146^ 
147. 149. 151, 153, 154, 174. 
^75. 176, i8o, 194, 195, 353; 
Memoirs of, footnote 145 
Evelyn, 131. 1 35. 141. 145 et 
Seq. ; early writings, 153-72 ; 
girlhood, 173-96; marriage' 
196. 

For Subsequent Life, see De 
Morgan, Evelyn 
Spencer, 145, 146, 147, 143, 149, 
150. 339 
Mrs. Spencer, 13 
Rowland, 145, 146, 147 
House, 136 
Regiment, 138 
Pickerings, Story of the, 135-52 
Puritan, 137, also footnote 138 
Pickering, Mr. (in fiction), see Mr. 

Verrinder 
Pickwick, First publication of, 33 
Pigeons, The. 265 footnote 
Pollock, Sir Frederick, 32 
Polyphemus, 211 
Polytechnic, 217. 370, 371 
Pondicherry, 22 
The, a ship, 21 
Poor Man who Saved the City, The 
(picture by E. De Morgan), 312 
Portmadoc, 63 
Poynter, Sir Edward. P.R.A.. 13, 84, 

179. 373 
Pre-Raphaelite Art, 9, 73 

Brotherhood, 66. 70, 143, 187-9, 190, 
201 
Price, Cormell, 71, 120, 121, 124, 232, 

also footnote; Z^^J . also footnote 
Priestley, Mr., 62, 63 
Private War, The, Novel by L. J, 

Vance, 258 
Prynne, The Misses, 265 
Publicat, 22 
Putney, 200 



Q 

Queen Eleanor and Fair Rosamund 
(picture by E. De Morgan) 



Queen Elizabeth, 136 

Victoria, 180 
Quincey, de, 339 



Ragstroar, Michael, 343, 36a 
Raydon, Sir Oliver, 331 etseq., 350 
Realities (picture by E. De Morgan), 

357 
Red Lion Square, No. 8, 77, 78, 113 
Renaissance, The, 97, 191 
" Retreat, The " {Kelmscott House), 119 

(The Vale), 200. 201 
Rheims Cathedral. Verses on, 366 
Rhodes, 204 
Ricardo, Halsey, 13, 129, 211, 212, 215, 

217, 221, 222, 228, 229, 379 
Richmond, Sir William, Preface by, 
9-1 1 ; 59. 77. 193. 204, 248, 308, 
372 
Robertson, Forbes, 97 
Robinson, Henry Crabb, 30 

Miss Mabel, 186-7. 195 
Rosalind, 28, 287. 288, 293 
Roscoe, Henry, 143 
Rose, J. A., 306 

Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 9, 71, 187, 
i^i, -2 ^2, also footnote ; 264, 265, 
297 footnote 
Russell-Cotes, Herbert, 13 
Russell. Miss Olive, 13 ; letters from 
and to, 349 



Sabine, General, 66 

St. Aubyn, Sir John (also Lord), 150 

St. Christina (picture by E. De Mor- 
gan), 311 

St. George (picture by W. De Morgan) 
84 

St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, 136 

St. John's, Fellow of, 140 

St. Lorenzo, 276 

Sairah (in A Likely Story), 340 

Sales- Wilson menage, 296 

Sally (in Somehow Good). 286, 287, 289, 
296, 299, 300, 302, 303, 304 

Sandford, 125 



INDEX 



401 



Sands End, 129, 227 

Sandwich, Earl of, 138 

Sandwick, Mr., 106 

School of Art, Bombay, 25 

Scott, Sir Walter, 251 

Scott-Moncrieff, see MoncrieS 

Scrap of Paper, A (picture by E. De 

Morgan), 383 
Scrolls of Fate, 154-5 
Seamaid, The Little (picture by E. De 

Morgan), 248 
Seeley, Miss F., 9, 278, 290, 291, 321 
Seven against Sense, The, 253 
Seymour, Warren, 266 footnote, 269 

footnote 
Shakespeare, 328, 329, 386 
Shalott, Lady of, 66, 118 
Shaw, Bernard, 237 

-Sparrow, Walter. 13, 88, 236, 237 
Ships' panels, 212, 214 
Sickert, Bernard, 249 
Siddons, Mrs., 265 

Sidmouth, Letter found on beach, 202 
Slade Schools, The, 177, 180 
Sleeping Earth and Wakening Moon, 
The (picture by E. De Morgan), 

311 

Smith, Mrs. Edward (Ethel Glaze- 
brook), 13 

Smith-Dickensen, Miss, 343, 344, also 
footnote 

Socialism, 116, 117, 340 

Society of Authors, 339 

Sole Bay. Battle of, 332 

Soloman, Simeon, 9, 61, 62, 77, 339, 

351 
Somehow Good, Origin of, 286, 287 ; 

odd coincidences connected 

with, 288 ; description of 

drowning, 289 
Somerville, Mrs. Mary, 30 
Sonning, 123 
Soul in Hell, A (picture by E. De 

Morgan), 357 
South Kensington Museum, 251 
Southampton, 121 
Southwark, 127 

Spectator, The, 242, 243, 248, 333 
Spencer, Herbert, 109-11 

Sarry, 252 
Spencers, The, 142 
Spiers, Phene, 97 



Spiritualism, 34, 35, 36, 37, 107, 108, 
109, 352. 353. 354. 355. 356, 357. 
358 
Standert, Mr. Hugh, 25 
Stanhope, Lord, 139 
Stanhope, Anna Maria Spencer-, 135, 
141, see Mrs. Pickering 
The Rev. Charles, 141 
Lady EUzabeth, 135, 139; letter 

bag of, 141 ; 142 
John, 135 
Roddam, 11, 74, 77, 143, 174, 190. 

191, 194, 208, 363 
Sir Walter, 353 
Spencer-Stanhopes, The, 225 
Stanley Park, 83 

Lady (D. Tennant), 180 
Stephen, Sir James, 112 
Steptoe, Mrs., 323 
Stoker, Bram, 60, 283, 284 
Mrs., 13 
Mrs., housekeeper at Fordhook, 46, 

47 
Stone House, Dingle, 334 
Stopleigh, Sir, 340 
Storm-Spirits, The (picture by E, De 

Morgan), 167 
Stowe, Art Auctioneer, 46, 47 
Straker, Lavinia, 278, also footnote 
Streatley, 121 
Stuffed Mother, Story of the, 183, 

185 
Suffolk, Earl of, 139 
Sunbury, 120 
Surrey, Earl of, 136 
Surtees Society, The, 29 
Swettenham, Sir Frank, 297 
Swinburne, 328 
Syrian ware, 204 



Tale of Two Cities, 272 
Taunton, 24, 25 
Taylor, Athelstane, 63 

the Planonist, 30 

William, Letter from, 202, 203 
Tennant, Lady, 295, 296. See Glen- 

conner 
Tennyson, Alfred, 329 
Terence, 207, 258 



402 



INDEX 



Tlmckcray, William Makcpiccc, lo, 

237, 271, 301 
Thirza, 121 ; ditto Ransom, 12 1 
Thompson, Dr. Reginald, 86 

Mrs. See Annie De Morgan 
Thomes House, 141 
Thomcy Way, The (picture by E. De 

Morgan), 192-3, 173-96 
Thorpe, Dr., 235, 236, 270, 272, 273, 

301. 329. 350, 352 
Tibellus, 201 
Tichmarsh, 137, 138 
Tiles, 78, 88, 92, 93 ; Persian tile, 96 

footnote ; Saracenic, 204, 207, 

208 ; marks on, 227 ; Dodo 

tile, 250 
Tishy, 296 

Toronto, Old Soldier from, 337 
Tottenham Court Road, 347 
Tractarian Movement, The, 7$ 
Traill, Gordon, 258 
Trinity College, Cambridge, 140 

Library, 26 
Turbeville (or Tivill), 22 
Tuscany, 191 
Tyburn, 136 
Tyssen-Amherst, 13, 62, 64 



u 

Ulysses, 211 

Umfreville, Mary, 138. See Pickering 

University, The London (or University 

College), 26, 27. 37, 51, 55, 56, 

65, 79, 80 
Upper Cheyne Row, 85, 86 
Upper Grosvenor Street, No. 6, 141, 

148, 149, 153. 178, 187 



Vale, The, 195. 196, 199. 256. 318, 319, 

330, 327. 337. 379 
Valley of Shadows, The (picture by E. 
De Morgan), 260, 310, 311, 357 
Vance, Christopher, 234, 249, 252, 255 
footnote, 258, 269, 348 
Mrs., 259, 260 
Governor, 277 



Joseph, Chapter X, 230-60 ; first 
chapters of, 233 ; plot of, 234- 
6, 237, 258 ; publication de- 
cided on, 240, 242 ; publication 
of, 245 ; letters relating to, 
248-57, 263. 284, 295, 303. 
305, 306 et seq. 
Mr. Louis Joseph, 59, 79 footnote, 
243. 244, 245, 256, 258, 259, 260, 
277, 298, 299, 325 ; meets De 
Morgan, 342 ; 345 

Vassall Phillips, Father, 292, 293, 325 

Vellore, 24 

Vere, Mary, 139. See Pickering 

Verrinder, Mr., 266 ; alias Pickering, 
286 
Jane, 262, 285, 299 

Victoria, Queen, 180, 

Victoria and Albert Museum, 13, 385 

Victorian Aunt, 341 

Viesseux, 346 



W 

Waddup, Lady Mary, 150 

Wakefield, 141 

Waldstein Sonata, 61, 257, 275, 318, 

337 
Walker, Mr., 46 

Art Gallery, 192 
Walhngford, 121 
Walpole, W. Vade, 1^6 footnote 
Wandersworth, Alice (Thornton), 29 

Christopher, 29 
Waudle, The River, 126, 127, 276 
War, Civil, 138 

Outbreak of the Great, 359, 360 

of Independence, 28 
Ward. Mrs. E. M., 342 

Mrs. Humphry, 255, 326 

John. 306, 307 

Sir Leslie, 342 
Wargrave, 12 1 
Watts, George Frederick, 146, 193, 

231, 311 

Mrs., 13, 231 

Dr. Isaac, 29 
WedgAvood, 82, 96 
Welsh, tenant at Merton, 127 
Wenger, 218 



INDEX 



403 



West. The Rev. George, 83 

Westminster Gazette, The, 385 

Westmorland, 136 

Whaite, 55 

When Ghost meets Ghost, 289, 343, 344, 

345. 346. 347. 348. 349. 350. 

372, 375 
Whistler, Mr., 199 
Wilde, Oscar, 328 
William the Conqueror, 138 
WilUams, Mr., 369 
Wind Fairies, The, 105 
Windsor, 123 
Winsor & Newton, Colour Merchants, 

123 
Wix, Mr., 343. 346 
Wobum dairy, 221 

panels, 224 
Wonderful Village, The, footnote 87 



Woolner, Mrs. Hugh, 13, 236. See also 

Mrs. Maisie Dowson 
Thomas, 71 
Worcester, 126 
Wordsworth, William, 30 
Worship of Mammon, The (picture by 

E. De Morgan), 311, 312 
Wyndham, Pamela, 252. See also 

Lady Glenconner 



Yale Courrant, The, 325 

University of, 330 
Yorkshire, 137, 142 



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